Description

This rare calendar and almanac for 1898 was printed in Istanbul in Serbian Cyrillic for the inhabitants of Serbian origins, who have remained in the Ottoman Empire after the official separation of Serbia twenty years before.

The title page is written in Cyrillic and Ottoman script. The almanac, which is dedicated to sultan Abdul-Hamid II, includes a calendar and useful information for every day life.

The book was printed by a Croatian press “Sons of A. Zelić“ in Istanbul. Antonije Zelić, a Croatian, born in Brela, Dalmatia in 1820, moved to Istanbul 1840 for economic reasons. In the city Zelić made an apprentissage at a French lithographer Henri Cayol (1805- 65) and opened his own printing shop in 1855, which soon became a recognized publishing house, known for its printing in foreign languages and for its lithographed posters. After Zelić’es death in 1890 his two sons took over the business. The Zelić press of Istanbul split between two brothers after WWI, with one branch operating until the 1930s and the other one until 1960.