İ.M. was born in the Transylvanian town of Kolozsvár (Cluj) in the early 1080s /1670s. His original Hungarian name is unknown. He appears to have chosen the name İbrahim after becoming an Ottoman subject and a convert to Islam. Although several sources, such as letters written by César de Saussure (d. 1783) and Charles Peyssonnel (d. 1790), shed light on the author’s Transylvanian past, these accounts should be characterized as retrospective interpretations of İ.M.’s pre-Ottoman life. The same appears to be true for İ.M.’s autobiographical notes preserved in what is generally accepted as an untitled treatise penned by him in 1122/1710, namely after he had already lived nearly twenty years as an Ottoman subject and a Muslim. Due to its defensive tone regarding Islam and its critical attitude against the Papacy, this work is commonly referred to by the tentative title Risale-i İslamiyye (Treatise on Islam). Although this treatise is completely silent about when and how its author became an Ottoman subject, İ.M. states that soon after his graduation from theological college, and certainly before becoming a member of the Ottoman milieu, he had found himself much more inclined to believe in Muhammad’s prophethood.

The first to interpret these sources was Imre Karácson (d. 1911), a Hungarian Catholic priest, who, in an effort to make these accounts more comprehensive filled in the narrative gaps with outright inventions. According to Karácson, İ.M. was born in 1085/1674 in Kolozsvár to a poor Calvinist Hungarian family. At the age of eighteen, during Thököly’s revolt of 1692-93, he was captured by Turkish soldiers, who failed to collect ransom for their captive, took İ.M. instead to Istanbul, and sold him at the slave market.

Strongly criticizing both Karácson and Saussure, Turkish scholar Niyazi Berkes (d. 1988) argued that İ.M. was taken captive by the Ottomans not as their enemy, but as one of Tököly’s supporters who needed protection after the suppression of the revolt by Austrians. According to Berkes, Risale-i İslamiyye reveals that İ.M. was not simply a Protestant, but a Unitarian, who studied at a Unitarian college. Berkes further suggested that İ.M. converted to Islam by his own volition.

Although İ.M. does not specify his denomination, his Unitarian inclination, seems to be confirmed by his contemporary Charles de Peyssonnel, the French liaison to the Ottoman grand vizier during the war of 1150-1152/1737-1739, which the Ottoman Empire, supported by France, fought against Austria and Russia. In a report dated 1151/1738, which was released after Berkes voiced his argument, Peyssonnel portrays İ.M. as a Hungarian born former minister of religion denying the Holy Trinity and states that he does not know why İ.M. converted to Islam. Peyssonnel’s statement that the two were neighbors in a bivouac near Sofia and communicated fluently in Latin lends credibility to his account.

İ.M. appears to have adapted to his new milieu quite successfully and enjoyed a successful career at the Ottoman court. Having educated himself in the Turkish language and Islamic sciences, İ.M. entered the müteferriqa corps, whose members were especially attached to the person of the sultan and served in various public or political missions. Hence his nickname “Müteferriqa”. In 1128/1716 he served as an Ottoman commissioner with the Hungarians who were assembled in Belgrade to promote their struggle for independence, which was supported by the Ottomans. In 1132/1720 İ.M. was appointed liaison officer to the Hungarian prince Ferenc Rákóczi (d. 1735), who, in the aftermath of his unsuccessful revolt against the Habsburgs (1115-1123/1703-1711) had left France for the Ottoman realm (1129/1717) to continue his struggle against Austria. In 1150/1737, İ.M. was dispatched to the Palatinus of Kiev for negotiations concerning the treaty between the Ottomans and the Poles. Between 1150-1152/1737-1739, he served to promote a Turkish-French alliance against Austria and Russia. In that context, in 1151/1738, he conducted negotiations on behalf of the Ottoman government with anti-Austrian Hungarians for the surrender of the fortress of Orsova to the Ottoman forces. Along with Comte de Bonneval, who later converted to Islam and came to be known as Humbaracı Ahmed Paşa (d. 1747), İ.M. also played an active role in promoting Ottoman-Swedish cooperation against Russia.

In addition to diplomatic missions, İ.M. also served in the Ottoman bureaucracy, first as scribe at the Ottoman artillery (ṭop arabacı) (1151-1156/1738-1743), and later at the imperial council (divan-ı hümayun) (1157-1158/1744-1745). The last position he held was the directorship of the first Ottoman paper mill at Yalova, near Istanbul (1158-1160/1745-1747). İ.M.’s recently discovered inheritance inventory reveals that he passed away at the end of Muharram/January 1160/1747, and not in 1158/1745 or 1159/1746, as previously thought. According to the same document, İ.M. left behind a wife named Hadice, also a convert, and a minor daughter named Ayşe. While some scholars have argued that İ.M. had a son (known as “Little İbrahim”), or even five sons, there is no documentary evidence to prove these claims. There are also scholars who suggest that İ.M. might have had a son, or sons, from a previous marriage.

Despite a successful Ottoman career, İ.M. does not appear to have been completely detached from his pre-Ottoman and pre-Islamic past. The fact that he wrote a treatise dealing with dogmatic issues concerning the Holy Trinity nearly twenty years after his conversion to Islam is a case in point. İ.M.’s connection with his earlier life facilitated probably his adoption of the ideas of Freemasonry if the claims characterizing him as one of the first Ottoman freemasons are true. In other words, İ.M. remained a person of two cultural worlds.

İ.M.’s Printing Activities

Printing was İ.M.’s main contribution not only to Ottoman, but also to Islamic culture. He was the first to run a state sponsored printing press in an Islamic country to print books in the Arabic script for the Turkish-speaking audience. His printing house was established in Istanbul in 1138/1726 and was officially recognized a year later, permitted to print secular texts only. İ.M. printed four separate maps between 1131-1141/1719-1729 and eighteen titles in sixteen books of twenty-two volumes (Kitab-ı Lugat-ı Vanqulı, known also as Sıhahü’l-Cevheri, Ta’rih-i Naima, and Ferheng-i Şuuri were two volumes; Ta’rih-i Raşid was three volumes; Ta’rihü’l-Mısri’l-Cedid and Ta’rihü’l-Mısri’l-Qadim were included in one volume, while Ta’rih-i Raşid and its appendix Ta’rih-i Çelebizade Efendi were one book of four volumes) between the years 1141-1155/1729-1742. One of the books, a manual of the Turkish language, was not intended for Ottoman-Muslims but for a Francophone audience. Two out of the remaining seventeen titles were Arabic-Turkish and Persian-Turkish dictionaries, 9 were histories, two included historical and geographical accounts, one was an exclusively geographical work, one was on physical issues, and one focused on political and military topics. Thus, the production of the first Ottoman-Turkish printing press was predominantly historical in nature.

The list of historical works printed by İ.M. consists of Katib Çelebi’s Tuhfetü’l-Kibar fi Esfari’l-Bihar (Select Gift in Voyages, 1141/1729), Juda Tadeusz Krusiński’s Ta’rih-i Seyyah der Beyan-ı Zuhur-ı Agvaniyan ve Sebeb-i İnhidam-ı Bina-yı Devlet-i Şahan-ı Safeviyan (Traveler’s History Concerning the Emergence of the Afghans and the Reasons for the Decline of the State of the Safavi Shahs, 1142/1729), Ta’rihü’l-Hindi’l-Garbi el-Müsemma bi-Hadis-i Nev (The History of the West Indies called The New Revelation, 1142/1730), Nazmizade Efendi’s Ta’rih-i Timur-ı Gurkan (History of Tamerlane, 1142/1730), Süheyli Efendi’s Ta’rihü’l-Mısri’l-Cedid; Ta’rihü’l-Mısri’l-Qadim (History of New Egypt; History of Ancient Egypt, 1142/1730), Nazmizade’s Gülşen-i Hulefa (Rose Garden of Caliphs, 1143/1730), Katib Çelebi’s Taqvimü’t-Tevarih (Calendar of Histories, 1146/1733), Naima’s Ta’rih (History, 1147/1734), Raşid Efendi’s Ta’rih (History) and its appendix (zeyl) written by Çelebizade Efendi (1153/1741), and Ömer Bosnavi’s Ahval-i Gazavat der Diyar-ı Bosna (The State of Wars in the Province of Bosnia, 1154/1741).

While some of these works were chosen for publication by İ.M. himself, others appear to have been recommended by Damadzade Ahmed Efendi (d. 1154/1741), the grand mufti of Istanbul who was known for his relatively liberal views. The fact that İ.M. placed an emphasis on the need of a deeper involvement in rational branches of learning by printing works on history, geography, and physics can be considered an implicit challenge against the traditional Ottoman and Muslim approach to knowledge and its diffusion. His western and Protestant cultural background may have had much to do with this.

The fact that İ.M. specifically chose to print historical texts indicates that he shared the early modern western understanding of history as a science. Ottoman narratives as well as surveys of inheritance inventories from İ.M.’s time reveal that the most popular books among the Ottoman reading public were historical works dealing with the genesis of Islamic religion and statehood (such as al-Ṭabari’s Ta’rih al-Rusul wa’l-Muluk) or Persian epics (such as Şahname and Hamzaname). Instead of choosing texts which included religious didacticism or entertainment, however, İ.M. focused on printing works which revealed historical developments in an objective manner and thus improved the historical knowledge of their readers.

For the 1142/1730 publication of Nazmizade’s Gülşen-i Hulefa, a historical work narrating the history of Muslim rulers from the Abbasid period up to the time of Ahmed III, İ.M. composed a preface focusing specifically on the utility of historical knowledge, especially for members of imperial ruling elites. In his Usulü’l-Hikem fi Nizam’l-Ümem, a treatise on the necessity of military reforms, İ.M. emphasized once again the importance of history as a science which provides insight and considered it a compulsory guide for governors. İ.M.’s understanding of history as a science appears to have been influenced most significantly by Katib Çelebi and Naima, themselves influenced by Ibn Haldun’s philosophy of history as revealed in his Muqaddima.

İ.M.’s inheritance inventory clearly reveals that the historical texts he printed sold well before his death in 1160/1747. His strategy of printing historical narratives appears to have proven reasonable and successful since most of them were later reprinted: Nazmizade’s Ta’rih-i Timur (1276/1860), Naima’s Ta’rih (1259/1843, 1280 /1863, 1281/1864-65), Raşid’s Ta’rih (1282/1865); Çelebizade’s Ta’rih (1282/1865), Katib Çelebi’s Taqvimü’t-Tevarih (1291/1874), Ömer Bosnavi’s Ahval-i Gazavat der Diyar-ı Bosna (1293/1876), Krusiński’s Ta’rih-i Seyyah (1277/1860), Ta’rihü’l-Hindi’l-Garbi (1292/1875), and Katib Çelebi’s Tuhfetü’l-Kibar (1293/1876, 1329 /1913).

By publishing and promoting historical works, İ.M. not only created for the Ottoman public a new taste for reading, but also gradually changed the traditional Ottoman view concerning history, from a field providing religious knowledge and entertainment to one that could improve the effectiveness of government for the welfare of its subjects. He thus contributed to Ottoman progress, as A. Ubicini noted in the middle of the 19th century.