Esad of Ioannina

Esad of Ioannina, who died around 1730, was an Ottoman Greek polymath who served as personal librarian to Sultan Ahmed III during the Tulip Era and is remembered as one of the most interesting intellectual figures of the early eighteenth century Ottoman Empire. Born in the late seventeenth century in Ioannina to Greek parents who had converted to Islam, he traveled to Constantinople in 1686 to study mathematics and astronomy at various madrasas, and he became the first person to translate Aristotle within the Ottoman Empire, rendering Porphyry's Isagoge and Aristotle's Organon and Physics into Arabic in an effort to unite Greek and Islamic learning. He was also instrumental in establishing the Ottoman Empire's first printing press, serving as one of four designated proofreaders after Sultan Ahmed's 1727 decree authorizing Muslim-operated printing, and he died in obscurity following the 1730 uprising of Patrona Halil that toppled the sultan.