Ahmed Cevdet Pasha’s Printed Quranic Manuscript in the Ottoman Empire: a Critical Study

Abstract This article discusses a discovery made by the author involving the wrong manuscript of calligrapher Şekerzâde being printed by the Ottoman Empire. It was initially illegal to sell printed copies of the Qurʾan in Ottoman lands, as cutting letters of the verses was deemed disrespectful. After foreign-printed copies began circulating, the position of the Ottoman government was forced to change. Thereby, the Ministry of Education, led by Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, was commissioned to produce a printed Qurʾan. However, the governmental body accidentally printed a manuscript that Şekerzâde wrote in Istanbul, while indicating it was the Qurʾan he wrote in Medina. Through careful examination, including translations of the inscriptions, this error was noticed for the first time. This paper presents an introduction to Ottoman reverence for the Qurʾan, a history of the printing process, background information of Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, and evidence regarding the mistake made when printing the manuscript.