With the support of the Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Muteferrika addressed a petition to the Sultan of Constantinople in the form of an essay entitled Wasilat al-Tiba'a, (Vesiletu-t Tibaa) The Utility of Printing, in which he showed the losses to Islamic learning from the absence of print and the great benefits that printing would bring to Muslims in general and Ottomans in particular.
Convinced by Muteferrika's essay, Sultan Ahmet III issued a firman (ferman) authorizing Sait Efendi and Ibrahim Muteferrika to open a printing house for printing in Arabic type. The authorization was limited only for books on practical or secular subjects. This edict protected the more than 4,000 professional manuscript copyists of Constantinople, whose work consisted almost entirely of copying the Qur'an, the collections of Islamic canonical traditions, and legal texts.
Meteferrika's essay was translated into English by Christopher M. Murphy and published in Atiyeh (ed) The Book in the Islamic World. The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (1995) 286-92. The Firman of Ahmed III was also translated into English and published in Atiyeh's book on pp. 284-85.
