Printing presses first appeared in the Kurdish towns of the Ottoman Empire in the late 1860s: Bitlis (1302 = 1865-6 or 1311 = 1893), Diyarbakir (1285= 1868-9) and Van (1307= 1889-90). They were all established, owned and operated by the government for printing in Turkish. A number of larger cities with small Kurdish populations on the outskirts of Kurdistan had an earlier start Mosul began with a press established by Dominican missionaries in 1856, followed by a government press in 1881, while Erzurum had a government press as early as 1865-66 (information based on Ottoman Government 1901).

Printing presses first appeared in the Kurdish towns of the Ottoman Empire in the late 1860s: Bitlis (1302 = 1865-6 or 1311 = 1893), Diyarbakir (1285= 1868-9) and Van (1307= 1889-90). They were all established, owned and operated by the government for printing in Turkish. A number of larger cities with small Kurdish populations on the outskirts of Kurdistan had an earlier start Mosul began with a press established by Dominican missionaries in 1856, followed by a government press in 1881, while Erzurum had a government press as early as 1865-66 (information based on Ottoman Government 1901).

The age of printing in Kurdish did not, however, begin in Kurdistan. All Kurdish books and periodicals published in Kurdish during the Ottoman period were printed outside Kurdistan in Cairo, Istanbul and Baghdad. This was because (a) with the exception of the Dominican press in Mosul, all other presses were owned by a government not interested in Kurdish publishing, (b) publishing was begun by Kurdish nationalists who were mostly in exile in Istanbul and other larger cities, and (c) censorship was less effective in Cairo and Istanbul (cf. 7.3.1).

The earliest record of a printing press owned by Kurds is "Matba’a Kurdistan ‘Ilmiya" (Scientific Kurdistan Press) established by Faraj-Allah Zaki al-Kurdi in Cairo, Egypt. The press printed a book in Arabic (Lisan Abna’ al-Madaris wa al-Mujtama’at, by Kamal al-Ddin al-‘Iraqi) in 1329 Hijri/1911, but there is no evidence of Kurdish language printing on this press.

Source: Dr. Amir Hassanpour, "Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan 1918-1985", 1992.