Vilayet Printing House (Sarajevo)

The Vilayet Printing House, 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