The Imprimerie de Constantinople was founded under the grand-vizier Ibrahim bacha who was a supporter of peace and of the sciences. He used all his influence with Achmet III to found this establishment, and when he obtained approval at the beginning of this century, he made use of an enlightened Hungarian and of a Jew called Jones to direct the work. He cause type faces of all kinds to be cast, to the number of more than two hundred thousand  [1] and, in 1727, began the printing of a Turkish dictionary of which copies were sold at up to 30 piasters. This printing-house contained six presses, four for books and two for maps.

The revolution in 1730 which deposed the ruler, and the death of his vizier who was abandoned to his fate, in no way destroyed the establishment for all that it was opposed to the policies of the government, to the precepts of the Qur'an and to the interests of a great many scribes who made their living by copying.

It is known that the Jews are at liberty to print their religious books in Turkey. In 1576 they gained permission to have a printing-house at Constantinople for this purpose and, from there, copies of their law spread across the Orient where it was very little known.

1. Il fit fondre toutes sortes de caracteres au nombre de plus de deux cent mille . I have translated the French text as it stands, interpreting caracteres as type faces, its usual meaning. But 200,000 different type faces is a quite incredible – indeed a ludicrous – number. Both in English ( sorts ) and in French, sortes can mean individual pieces of type, usually carrying the same letter. So perhaps Jaucourt was just saying that the Imprimerie had more than 200,000 pieces of type of various kinds; 200,000 pieces of type is neither incredible nor, one would imagine, even a particularly large number of individual pieces of type for a whole printing house, so why remark on it?