Vilayet Printing House (Sarajevo)

Sopron's Printing House
(April–October 1866)
Vilayet Printing House
(October 1866 – August 1878)

Nameplate of Bosanski vjestnik, the first newspaper to be published in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Status	Defunct (1878)
Founded	1866 (1866)
Founder	Ignjat Sopron
Country of origin	Ottoman Empire
Headquarters location	Sarajevo
Distribution	Vilayet of Bosnia
Publication types	Newspapers, books
Nonfiction topics	Politics, law, education, culture, religion
Owner(s)	Ignjat Sopron (April–October 1866); Government of the Vilayet of Bosnia (October 1866 – August 1878)

The Vilayet Printing House (Serbo-Croatian: Вилајетска штампарија, Vilajetska štamparija), originally named Sopron's Printing House (Сопронова печатња, Sopronova pečatnja), was the official printing house of the Ottoman Vilayet of Bosnia from April 1866 until the occupation of the province by Austria-Hungary in August 1878. It was the second printing house that operated in the territory of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, founded in Sarajevo almost 350 years after the Goražde printing house ceased its activity. Its founder was Ignjat Sopron, a publisher and printer from Zemun, who sold the establishment to the Government of the Vilayet of Bosnia in October 1866. Its foundation happened in the context of modernising and Europeanising Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire. Its principal aim was to issue an official gazette of the vilayet and publish textbooks for the elementary schools of Bosnian Serbs and Croats, thus stopping their import from the Principality of Serbia and the Austrian Empire.

The first newspaper to be published in Bosnia and Herzegovina was Bosanski vjestnik, a political-informative and educational weekly edited by Sopron and printed in Serbian Cyrillic. It had a pro-Serb inclination, though it generally promoted a unitary Bosnian nation, in accordance with the Ottoman policy in the province. The official gazette, the weekly Bosna, was primarily concerned with publishing and explaining laws, orders, and proclamations. Another weekly issued by the printing house was Sarajevski cvjetnik, which fiercely defended the Ottoman regime and polemicised with Serbian and Austrian newspapers that criticised it. Bosna and Sarajevski cvjetnik were bilingual, printed half in Ottoman Turkish and half in Serbo-Croatian in the Cyrillic script. The printing house produced a number of elementary school textbooks, including the second Serbian alphabet book using the reformed Serbian Cyrillic, following Vuk Karadžić's book published in Vienna in 1827. Other books include a collection of Bosnian Serb lyric folk poetry, an Ottoman Turkish grammar, and several Jewish religious books. The first printed exemplar of Bosnian Aljamiado literature was also published by the Vilayet Printing House. It produced around 50 books and booklets altogether, most of them being concerned with various Ottoman laws and legislation.