![]() 737-46, 747-48), one of many bits of evidence for the widespread use of paper by merchants and missionaries throughout Central Asia in the pre-Islamic period. A fragment of paper inscribed in Judeo-Persian around the year 718 was obtained by Aurel Stein (1862-1943) from Dandān Öilïq in Chinese Turkestan in the early 20th century (Margoliouth, pp. Unlike arid Central Asia, conditions in Iran are generally not favorable to the preservation of fragile organic materials. By the end of the 8th century, it was manufactured in Baghdad, by the end of the 9th century it was made in Egypt, and by the end of the 10th century it was used in the Iberian Peninsula, transforming the emerging Islamic civilization in its wake (Bloom, 2001).Īlthough paper had been introduced to the Islamic lands through Central Asia and Iran, little direct evidence survives for its use there in the first three centuries of Islamic period, and the history of its production and use must be pieced together from disparate sources. In any event, with the coming of Islam, the use and manufacture of paper, which had been previously unknown, quickly spread from Central Asia to Iran and thence throughout the Islamic lands. On the one hand, paper was already widely known (and presumably manufactured) in Central Asia in the pre-Islamic period on the other hand, Muslim historians tended to ascribe historical developments to the responsible acts of individual actors. Furthermore, there is no historical evidence suggesting that Chinese papermakers needed to have been involved in the technology transfer. ![]() Consequently, rag, not bast, paper would be characteristic of papers produced in the Islamic lands for centuries. e): By the 8th century, Chinese paper was normally made entirely from bast (i.e., plant) fiber, such as the inner bark of the paper-mulberry, while papermakers in arid Central Asia, where paper-mulberry was not cultivated, had presumably perfected the production of paper from flax, cotton, or such waste materials as old rags and ropes. Yet this charming story, first reported by ʿAbd-al-Malek Moḥammad Ṯaʿālebi (d. Similarly, the introduction of paper to Iran and the Islamic lands is repeatedly (but erroneously) ascribed to the purported capture of Chinese papermakers following the battle of Talas (Ṭarāz) in 134/751. There is no hard evidence to suggest that the Sasanians either knew of or used Chinese paper, despite unsubstantiated accounts of its use that have been repeated in the literature. ![]() ![]() Paper was invented in China in the centuries before the Christian era and carried by Buddhist monks and missionaries throughout East, South, and Central Asia in the period before the coming of Islam in the 7th century CE, but the origins of paper in Iran are shrouded in legend. In Iran, the sheets of paper are usually then sized with starch and burnished to produce fine sheets of extraordinary smoothness, perfect for the sweeping lines of nastaʿliq calligraphy. The wet fibers are either pounded in a hammer mill or ground under millstones the resulting “stuff” is suspended in water, collected on a screen, turned out, and dried. The fibers can come from many different kinds of plants or waste such as rags, old ropes, and nets. Paper ( kāḡaḏ) is a mat of cellulose fibers that have been beaten in the proximity of water and then collected on a screen and dried. Paper in the Iranian World Prior to Printing ![]()
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