[1] After his father died, he went to Constantinople, where he studied mathematics and foreign languages, learning French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew alongside Turkish, Arabic and Persian.
[2][3] In July 1824 he was also named as interpreter (dragoman) to the Sublime Porte in succession to Yahya Efendi [tr], a post he held until 1828/9, when he was dismissed, possibly due to fears by the secretary of state (reis ül-küttab) Pertev Pasha that he might replace him.
[2][4] During the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, Ishak Efendi spent some time supervising the construction of fortresses, before resuming his teaching post at the Imperial School of Military Engineering, where he rose to become Head Instructor (başhoca) in December 1830/January 1831.
[2] As Head Instructor, he tried with some success to reform the curriculum and raise the educational level of the faculty, but his influential predecessor, Seyyid Ali Pasha, managed through his connections at court to have him sent to Medina on the pretext of going to the Hajj, as well as to supervise various restorations to the holy sites there.
It contained translations, mostly of contemporary French works, on mathematics, physics, chemistry and geology, and played a crucial role in introducing many contemporary scientific concepts to the Muslim world: according to the Encyclopedia of Islam, it was "the first work in Turkish on the modern physical and natural sciences", being credited with introducing the "scientific terminology, based on Arabic, which was used in Turkey up to the 1930s and in some Arab countries still later".