Jonah ben Jacob Ashkenazi was a printer and publisher who helped to make Istanbul a center of Hebrew printing in the Ottoman Empire. He was born in Zalosce, Poland (now Zaliztsi, Ukraine), to an Ashkenazi family, and later emigrated to Istanbul. In 1710, Ashkenazi engraved movable-type settings in Hebrew and decorations for title pages, and with these founded a printing press in the city. During his first two years in Istanbul, he worked in partnership with a Jew from Vienna, Naphtali ben Azriel. Ashkenazi later moved his press north of the city, to Ortaköy. In 1714 he went…