Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Bloom, Jonathan M.

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Description: Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

BOOKPaper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Jonathan M. Bloom

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20564

Like the printing press, typewriter, and computer, paper has been a crucial agent for the dissemination of information. This engaging book presents an important new chapter in paper’s history: how its use in Islamic lands during the Middle Ages influenced almost every aspect of medieval life. Focusing on the spread of paper from the early eighth century, when Muslims in West Asia acquired Chinese knowledge of paper and papermaking, to five centuries later, when they transmitted this knowledge to Christians in Spain and Sicily, the book reveals how paper utterly transformed the passing of knowledge and served as a bridge between cultures.

Jonathan Bloom traces the earliest history of paper—how it was invented in China over 2,000 years ago, how it entered the Islamic lands of West Asia and North Africa, and how it spread to northern Europe. He explores the impact of paper on the development of writing, books, mathematics, music, art, architecture, and even cooking. And he discusses why Europe was so quick to adopt paper from the Islamic lands and why the Islamic lands were so slow to accept printing in return. Together the text and illustrations (of papermaking techniques and the many uses to which paper was put) give new luster and importance to a now-humble material.

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Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date October 2001 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300089554

EISBN 9780300257731

Illustrations 103

Print Status in print

Publisher (in print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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List of illustrations

The spread of paper and papermaking
The spread of paper and papermaking, detail of West Asia
View of Nuremberg
Papermakers forming the sheets in molds (top left), couching, or layering, the sheets (top center), and pressing the stack (top right)
The molecular structure of cellulose
Cotton fibers, seen under a scanning electron microscope
Mesopotamian clay tablet impressed with cuneiform writing
Stela from Tjetji's tomb-chapel
Fragment of a papyrus roll
Wooden writing tablet
Pair of boxwood writing tablets hinged with ivory
Parchment Torah scroll
Papyrus fragment
Page from a blank papyrus codex, later inscribed
Pages from the Codex Sinaiticus
Papyrus sheet
Bamboo tablets
Map from tomb 3, Mawangdui, Hunan
Fragment of hemp paper
Miniature printed charm scroll, detail
Diamond Sutra
Letter in Soghdian script
Leaves of the talipot palm inscribed with the text of Astasahasrika Pajnaparamita
Letter in Soghdian script
Papyrus plants, Sicily
Seated scribe
The Parchment-Maker
Page from a copy of the Koran
Folio from a Qur'an manuscript, detail
Manuscript of the Koran
Manuscript of the Koran copied on European watermarked paper
Greek text of the Doctrina patrum
Paper fragment
Manuscript of Abu Ubayd’s Gharaib al-hadith
Page from a dispersed manuscript of the Koran on paper
Noah's Ark
Salm and Tur slay Iraj
Two pages from a mammoth copy of the Koran
Blue Chinese paper with decoration in gold of Landscape of a River and Hills and Two Birds in a Flowering Tree
Memorandum of a business transaction
Section of a decree issued by the Fatimid caliph al-Hafiz
Fragment of a playing card (the four of cups)
The Woman speaking with the Old Lady about Riyad, while Riyad is stopped near the pool with blood pouring from her face
Undershot and overshot waterwheels
Horizontal waterwheel
Cams and stampers in a papermill
Woman in western Nepal making paper with floating mold
Japanese papermaking mold
Sheet of medieval Spanish paper
Copy of the forty-two-line Bible printed by Gutenberg
Oil lamp
Taj Mahal, detail of Koranic inscription on the facade
Qur'an page
Dome of the Rock, interior, detail of glass mosaic inscription band
Portion of a document recording receipt of payment
Page from a manuscript of the Koran
Page from a dispersed manuscript of the Koran
Two pages from a manuscript of the Koran copied on parchment in broken cursive script
Folio from a Qur'an Manuscript
Right half of a double-page frontispiece, manuscript of the Epistles of the Sincere Brethren
Double-page frontispiece, manuscript of the Arabic translation of Dioscorides’ De materia medica
Copy of al-Hariri’s Maqamat
Parts of the typical Islamic book
Chart of Arabic numerals
World map from a copy of Ibn Hawqal’s Geography
The constellation Andromeda from al-Sufi’s Treatise on the Fixed Stars
Map of the Nile from a copy of al-Khwarizmi’s Geography
World map from a copy of al-Kashgari’s Turkish grammar
World map from a copy of al-Idrisi’s Geography
Index diagram showing the relation of the sectional maps in al-Idrisi’s Geography
Graticule map of central and western Asia
Battle chart from a copy of Muhammad ibn Isa al-Aqsarai’s End of Questioning
Final page of an anonymous popular romance
Lion drawing with three lines of text from a discourse on wild animals
Leaf from a Greek manuscript of Aesop’s Fables and Kalila and Dimna
Drawing of a seated figure on the back of a star-shaped tile
Bowl with a Figure and Birds
Plate
Linen textile with inscription band
Fragmentary textile, detail
Great Mosque of Córdoba, interior
Tomb of the Samanids
Badr al-Din Lu’lu’lu hunting with falcons, frontispiece to Book of Songs, volume 20
Warqa’s father, Humam, dies in his arms, from Warqa and Gulshah
Bahram Gur Kills the Dragon, from the First Small Shāhnāma
Sketches of mythical animals and trees
Pitcher
Large luster bowl
Dish
An open-air Mongol court
Pricked drawing of a paradisiacal scene
Sultaniyya, mausoleum of Sultan Uljaytu, detail of caults
Right-hand frontispiece to the sixth section of a thirty-part Koran manuscript
Plaster plaque bearing the design for a muqarnas vault
Shrine of Abd al-Samad, muqarnas vault over tomb
Large-patterned Holbein carpet
Medallion carpet
Laid paper
The twenty-four-point Arabic font
Block-printed amulet on paper
Opening pages of the Koran
Opening page of the Tarikh-i rashid afandi, a history of the Ottoman dynasty from 1660
A Hollander beater

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Contents

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Contents

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20565

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Preface

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

~In the Middle Ages, paper—a material now so common that it is taken for granted—transformed the ways that people living in West Asia and North Africa thought and worked. It became the prime medium of memory. I have spent my professional life studying and writing about the history of art and architecture in the Islamic lands, but I was suddenly...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20566

Chapter subject tags:Islamic Empire--HistoryPapermaking--HistoryPrinting--HistoryIslamic illumination of books and manuscripts

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Maps

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Maps

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20567

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Introduction

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Paper, one of the most ubiquitous materials in modern life, was invented in China a century or two before the Common, or Christian, Era. Nearly a millennium passed, however, before Europeans first used the stuff, and they did not make it themselves until the eleventh and twelfth centuries. European Christians learned about making paper from the Muslims...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.1-15

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.001

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20568

Chapter subject tags:Papermaking--HistoryChinese paperPrinting--Europe--HistoryGutenberg BibleIslamic Empire--History

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Chapter 1: The Invention of Paper

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Humans have been around for five million years. For 99.9 percent of that time, or until about five thousand years ago, they did not write at all. The invention of writing around 3000 B.C.E. transformed human society by enabling people to transmit greater quantities of knowledge more accurately across vast distances of space and time. In spite of the power of writing, however, or perhaps because of...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.17-45

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20569

Chapter subject tags:Papermaking--HistoryManuscripts (Papyri)ParchmentChristian literature, Early

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Chapter 2: The Spread of Papermaking Across the Islamic Lands

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

The unification of West Asia under Islam in the eighth century meant that once Muslims encountered paper in Central Asia, its use spread rapidly across Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa to Spain. For papermaking to travel from its place of origin—China—to Samarqand, in Central Asia, had taken about five centuries, but a mere two centuries after Muslims encountered paper in...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.47-89

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20570

Chapter subject tags:Papermaking--HistoryIslamic Empire--HistoryManuscripts (Papyri)QurʼanWriting, Arabic

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Chapter 3: Paper and Books

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Western historians have often argued that Islamic civilization made its greatest mistake in the fifteenth century when it refused to accept the printing press, for this failure supposedly condemned Islamic civilization to isolation from the mainstream of knowledge. Although Muslims did not use the printing press until the eighteenth century, and then only tentatively, they had other means of...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.91-123

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.004

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20571

Chapter subject tags:Papermaking--HistoryBooks--HistoryWriting, ArabicPaleography, Arabic (Cufic)Islamic illumination of books and manuscripts

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Chapter 4: Paper and Systems of Notation

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

The spread of paper from Baghdad, the Abbasid capital, in the late eighth and early ninth centuries coincided not only with expanded literary production on many subjects and an absolute increase in the number of books but also with the development of several systems of notation. The attempt to create graphic analogues of human activities was in itself nothing new in human history, but the...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.125-159

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.005

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20572

Chapter subject tags:MathematicsPapermaking--HistoryCartographyIslamic Empire--HistoryCommerce

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Chapter 5: Paper and the Visual Arts

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Once paper was available in the Islamic lands, artists and artisans eventually came to exploit its possibilities, but they were somewhat slower to do so than were writers, mathematicians, geographers, and merchants. Before paper, artists and artisans worked directly with their chosen materials—clay, bronze, cloth, brick, plaster—relying on experience and practice to do what we would...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.161-201

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.006

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20573

Chapter subject tags:Papermaking--HistoryIslamic decoration and ornamentIslamic potteryIslamic textile fabrics

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Chapter 6: The Transfer of Paper and Papermaking to Christian Europe

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

The transfer of paper and papermaking technology from the Islamic lands to Christian Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries prepared the way for the European print revolution of the fifteenth century. Yet Gutenberg’s invention might never have taken off if he and his followers had been limited to printing books on parchment. Gutenberg is thought to have printed 200 copies of his Bible,...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.203-213

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.007

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20574

Chapter subject tags:Papermaking--HistoryPrinting--Europe--HistoryManuscripts, ByzantinePrinting presses

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Chapter 7: Paper After Print

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Over the course of the seven centuries between 800 and 1500, inhabitants of the Islamic lands—who were largely but not exclusively Muslims—carried their knowledge of paper and papermaking across a vast swath of Eurasia and North Africa. Had they not mediated between the cultures of the Far East and the Far West, Europeans would probably have remained ignorant of paper—as well as...

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.215-226

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00217.008

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20575

Chapter subject tags:Printing--HistoryWriting, ArabicPapermaking--HistoryBlock printingPrinting presses

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Bibliographical Essay

Jonathan M. Bloom

Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World

Bibliographical Essay

Author

Jonathan M. Bloom

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.227-247

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20576

Chapter subject tags:Papermaking--HistoryIslamic Empire--HistoryBooks--HistoryIslamic Empire--HistoryPrinting presses

Access to this content is only available to subscribers. If you are at an institution that currently subscribes to the A&AePortal, please login to your VPN before accessing the site. If you have already purchased an individual subscription, please sign in to your account to access the content. Learn more about subscriptions.

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