Muteferriqa is a discovery portal developed for Ottoman and Turkish studies. It covers almost all books and periodicals printed from the early 18th century, when printing arrived in the Ottoman Empire, to the mid-20th century.
About Muteferriqa
Muteferriqa consists of two main collections: Periodicals and Books.
• Periodical Collection: Approximately 1,500 titles, 160,000 issues, approximately 1.5 million pages.
• Book Collection: Over 35,000 books, approximately 6 million pages.
• Both full text and metadata are searchable in Arabic and Latin-based alphabets. For example, users can type "statue" in English, "heykel" in Turkish, or "ﻞﻫ" in Ottoman Turkish to search for the keyword "statue".
• Images from both collections can be queried and viewed independently. Users can search images using content descriptions or category tags; They can also discover new images based on similarity.
• Latin script Turkish and English language support makes the treasure trove of Ottoman printed sources accessible to those who cannot read old script texts and those who do not know any Turkish.
• You can search and read in your preferred language.
Muteferriqa Periodical Collection
• Hakkı Tarık Us Digital Collection, Ottoman Turkish periodicals
• Istanbul Chamber of Commerce Digital Collection, Ottoman Turkish, Turkish, English, French, German periodicals
• Istanbul University Latin Script Newspapers Digital Collection, Turkish newspapers
• Approximately 1,500 titles and 160,000 issues,
• Akşam, Ceride-i Havadis, Resimli Gazete, Sabah, Servet-i Fünûn, Takvim-i Vakayi, Tanin, Tercüman-ı Hakikat, Istanbul Chamber of Commerce Newspaper and many more,
• Approximately 1 million pages (equivalent to ~4 million book pages in terms of word count).
Muteferriqa Book Collection
• Ottoman Turkish Books from the Seyfettin Özege Rare Books Collection,
• Over 35,000 titles including the following,
• Books published by İbrahim Müteferrika,
• Editions of Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatname, editions of Tarih-i Cevdet,
• Other important works by leading authors of the period,
• Approximately 7.5 million pages of images from the Muteferriqa Periodicals and Book Collections,
• 1,660,000 images from the Periodicals and Book Collections.
Search Features
• Full-text search across millions of pages of Ottoman Turkish printed books and periodicals,
• Advanced search to combine bibliographic queries and full-text queries with logical operators,
• Wildcard search where special symbols replace any character, e.g., to find words with suffixes,
• Fuzzy search to find similar words/phrases, e.g., to find spelling variations for foreign names,
• Proximity search to find multiple words within a certain distance of each other, potentially within the same sentence or paragraph.
Discovery Features
• Discover similar images with visual content-based suggestions,
• Discover similar titles with content-based suggestions,
• Discover query terms that potentially lead you to what you are looking for with automated query suggestions.
User Experience
• Personalize your research with bookmarks and saved searches,
• Easily navigate between works using Muteferriqa's comprehensive index pages,
• Use the customized virtual keyboard to enter your Arabic script text queries and take advantage of advanced functions such as proximity search,
• Use versatile filters to filter search results by bibliographic information.
Opening the Way for Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Muteferriqa removes language barriers in research and opens the way for interdisciplinary research collaborations by offering its users the ability to search in Turkish and English as well as Ottoman Turkish, and by providing the possibility to translate texts into Turkish, English, Arabic, and Russian. Thanks to its visual discovery features, Muteferriqa offers unique discovery opportunities not only for Ottoman historians but also for art historians, designers, and even engineers from all fields.