The first newspapers in the Ottoman Empire were owned by foreigners living there who wanted to make propaganda about the Western world. The earliest was printed in September 1795 by the
Palais de France in Pera (now
Beyoğlu), during the embassy of
Raymond de Verninac-Saint-Maur. It was issued fortnightly under the title "
Bulletin de Nouvelles", until March 1796, it seems. Afterwards, it was published under the name "
Gazette française de Constantinople" from September 1796 to May 1797, and "
Mercure Oriental" from May to July 1797. Its main purpose was to convey information about the politics of Post-Revolutionary France to foreigners living in
Istanbul; therefore, it had little impact on local population. In 1800, during the
French occupation of Egypt, a newspaper in Arabic,
Al-Tanbih (The Alert), was planned to be issued, with the purpose of disseminating in Egypt the ideals of the French Revolution. It was founded by the general
Jacques-François Menou, who appointed Ismail al-Khashab as its editor. However, there is doubt the newspaper was actually ever printed. Menou eventually
capitulated after Alexandria was
besieged by British forces in 1801. In 1828,
Khedive of Egypt
Muhammad Ali ordered, as part of the drastic reforms he was implementing in the province, the local establishment of the gazette
Vekâyi-i Mısriyye (Egyptian Affairs), written in
Ottoman Turkish in one column with an
Arabic translation in a second column (Ottoman Turkish text was in the right one and Arabic text in the left one). It was later edited in Arabic only, under the Arabic title "
Al-Waqaʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya" (The Egyptian Affairs). The first official gazette of the Ottoman State was published in 1831, on the order of
Mahmud II. It was entitled "
Le Moniteur ottoman", perhaps referring to the French newspaper
Le Moniteur universel. Its weekly issues were written in French and edited by Alexandre Blacque at the expense of the
Porte. A few months later, a
firman of the sultan ordered that a Turkish gazette be published under the named "
Takvim-i Vekayi" (Calendar of Affairs), which would be effectively translating
Le Moniteur ottoman, and issued irregularly until November 4, 1922. Laws and decrees of the sultan were published in it, as well as descriptions of
court festivities. The first non-official Turkish newspaper,
Ceride-i Havadis (Register of Events), was published by an Englishman,
William Churchill, in 1840. The first private newspaper to be published by Turkish journalists,
Tercüman-ı Ahvâl (Ottoman Turkish:
Interpreter of Events), was founded by
İbrahim Şinasi and
Agah Efendi and issued in October 1860; the owners stated that "freedom of expression is a part of human nature", thereby initiating an era of free press as inspired by the ideals of 18th century
French Enlightenment. In the meantime, the first private newspaper written solely in Arabic, ''Mir'at al-ahwal
, had been founded by a Syrian poet, Rizqallah Hassun, in 1855, but it had been suspended a year later by Ottoman authorities because of its critical tone regarding their policies. Subsequently, several newspapers flourished in the provinces. A new press code inspired by French law, Matbuat Nizamnamesi'', was issued in 1864, accompanied by the establishment of a censorship office.
Elisabeth Kendall, author of "Between Politics and Literature: Journals in Alexandria and Istanbul at the End of the Nineteenth Century," wrote that therefore by the 1880s "purer cultural journalism" became the focus of publications that remained in the imperial capital. ==By city==