Ohannes Mühendisyan
Ohannes Mühendisyan (also spelled Hovhannes and Müehendisoglu in Turkish and Müehendiszade in Ottoman Persian; 1810–1891) was an Armenian typographer and engraver working in Istanbul.[1] He is notable for having pioneered the flattened ج ح خ forms (ـجـ ـحـ ـخـ) in type, as necessitated for printing the Arabic script with the technology available at the time.[1]
Biography
[edit]After completing schooling at 15, he apprenticed at a jeweller.[1] He began creating type in 1839 without prior introduction, starting with producing lower case Armenian type first published in an almanac in 1840 at a press located in a seminary in Üsküdar.[1] In 1843, he was invited by the Ottoman Imperial Printing House Takvim-hane-i Amire to create Nastaliq-style typefaces for Turkish, a complex project that took a number of years.[1] At this time he moved with his equipment to Çukur Çeşme Han.[1] He also fulfilled many other printing orders, such as printing banknotes, which he was able to execute with presses imported from the US and France.[1] He crafted a naskh typeface for Arabic based on manuscripts of Mustafa Izzet Efendi, and presented his family of naskh fonts to Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1888.[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h Conidi, Emanuela (2018). Arabic types in Europe and the Middle East, 1514-1924 : challenges in the adaptation of the Arabic script from written to printed form. pp. 597–8. doi:10.48683/1926.00080437. OCLC 1079208428.