Printed in Ishmael’s Realm: Hebrew Printing in Early Ottoman Constantinople

Within two years of the Expulsion from Spain, a family of Sephardi exiles in Ottoman Constantinople had established a printing press, which produced the first book known to have been printed with movable type in the Islamic world: the Arba’a Turim (Istanbul, 1493). The Ibn Nahmias family and their collaborators continued to print books for the following four decades, creating an invaluable window into the experience of Sephardi Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the sixteenth century.

In this presentation, Dr. Sienna explores the work of the Ibn Nahmias press in Constantinople, surveying not only the content of the books they produced but also the significance of their physical and visual forms, as windows into the connections and transformations of Mediterranean Sephardi communities between the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire. Focusing on the role of printing in the religious and social transformations of the early modern world, this presentation will offer a glimpse into the unique atmosphere of an early modern Jewish print house in the Islamic world.

Noam Sienna is currently the Aresty Visiting Scholar at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, with the Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and the Rutgers Initiative for the Book. He researches Jewish book cultures in the medieval and early modern Islamic worlds, and is currently working on a socio-bibliographic study of the first Hebrew press in the Ottoman Empire. He received his PhD in History and Museum Studies from the University of Minnesota, and is also a Senior Fellow with the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography. His first monograph, Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds, appeared from Indiana University Press in 2025, and received the 2025 Book Award from the Middle East Librarians Association. He is also a practicing book artist whose work brings together historical and contemporary expressions of Jewish visual and textual culture, focusing on reviving and preserving traditions of Hebrew calligraphy and Jewish letterpress printing

*Guests must register by Thursday, March 5, to be approved for campus access; unregistered guests will not be permitted on campus. Each guest must register individually using a unique email address.

*Guests must register by Thursday, March 5, to be approved for campus access; unregistered guests will not be permitted on campus. Each guest must register individually using a unique email address.

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye family.

While all IIJS events are free and open to the public, we do encourage a suggested donation of $10.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University