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Home , History of paper

Silk Road or Road? Jonathan M. Bloom Boston College

Well over a century ago, the strips or Austrian geologist and explorer tablets that had Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833- been used for writing Fig. 1. Han period bamboo woodslip found near 1905) coined the term Seiden- [Figs. 1, 2] and the , Dunhuang Museum. Photograph © Daniel strasse, “ Road (or Route)” to silk textiles that had C. Waugh 1998. refer to the network of land routes been used for larger that linked and from images, such as maps and were the first to discover (or the 3rd century BCE to the 15th drawings. Although the Chinese rediscover) that waste from century CE. Silk, which was traded initially made paper from refuse textiles that were themselves with the West from the later part , they soon found that they made from plant fibers, including of the Zhou period (ca. 1050-256 BCE) was only one of the many commodities traded along these routes, for jade had been brought to China from as early as the Shang period (ca. 1600 to ca. 1050 BCE), and Mediterranean glassware reached China during the Qin period (221-206 BCE) [Sørensen and Marshak 1996]. Traders brought exquisite Chinese ceramics to Iraq in the ninth century, when it was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty (749-1258), and Fig. 2. Land-purchase document in Kharosthi script written on a wooden tablet, Islamic underglaze-painted wares found at Niya by Aurel Stein, BL Or.8211/1494 (N.xv.11.a). Photograph © The as well as Iranian cobalt were British Library, used with permission. All rights reserved. See Silk Road Exhi- taken to China, where they bition online at , item 76. inspired the development of that quintessentially Chinese ceramic could also make it from the inner and but excluding wool technique of blue-and-white bark of several woody shrubs, such and silk (which were animal fibers porcelain [Carswell 1985]. Perhaps as bamboo, paper-mulberry, and impossible to use in ), the most important product carried rattan that grew well in moist and could also make good paper along this trade network, however, humid southeastern China, and [Hoernle 1903]. Indeed, it was was paper, a now-ubiquitous from then on waste fibers were not often easier to make paper from material which has had a far normally used in China for previously processed fibers greater impact on the course of papermaking. because the fibers required less human civilization than silk, jade beating. It is likely that at a Buddhist monks and mis- or glass ever had. relatively early date Buddist sionaries, who began to use this travelers also brought paper and Paper, which is a of medium for copying sutras and knowledge of papermaking to fibers that have been other Buddhist writings, carried India, but unlike elsewhere, beaten in water and collected on paper and papermaking from the papermaking did not take hold in a screen and dried, was invented land of its origin to Korea, India for another millennium in southeastern China in the and Central Asia, where they [Soteriou 1999]. centuries before Christ [Tsien stopped on the way to India, the 1985; Bloom 2001]. Originally land of Buddhism’s birth. The arid Paper was unknown in Western used as a wrapping material, paper Central Asian climate was quite Asia and the Mediterranean world began to be used as a writing different from that of subtropical before the coming of Islam, when material around the time of Christ, southeastern China, and the media traditionally used for when it was discovered that this papermakers were forced to find writing there were and relatively inexpensive, strong and different materials with which to . Papyrus, which had flexible material provided an ideal make their product. It seems likely been used in from at least replacement for the narrow that Central Asian papermakers 3000 BCE, is made from a plant

© 2005 Jonathan Bloom 21 Fig. 4. Letter on parchment from king of Kroraina to local governor in Niya, 3-4 century CE. BL Or.8211/1553 (N.xv.88). Photograph © The British Library, used with permission. All rights reserved. See online Silk Road Exhibition , item 141.

volumen, has evolved into words papyrus in a wider variety of such as volume and volute (on environments; it was especially account of its shape). Pagina, strong when used in the codex Fig. 3. Draft of a petition to the katholicos the Latin term for a column of format, for the repeated folding by Aurelios Ammon, Scholastikos, fl. 348 text on a papyrus roll, has and exposed edges it demanded CE. Duke Papyrus Archive, evolved into our word “,” weakened papyrus sheets. P.Duk.inv.18R, online at . Photograph © Rare word for bark, became the much debated, and it remains , Manuscript and Special Collections generic Latin word for book. unclear whether the triumph of the Library, Duke University Libraries, used Although the most common form codex format in the Mediterranean with permission. All rights reserved. of the book was the papyrus roll, world was directly related to the that flourishes along the banks of sometime in the centuries after spread of Christianity [Roberts and the Nile. The stalks of the plant Christ a new form of book, with Skeat 1983]. For about a were cut into lengths, the lengths separate folded leaves sewn thousand years writing-tablets of were cut into strips, and the strips together on one side, emerged. wood with a thin overlay of wax laid side-by-side in two This was known as a codex, from had been used for note-taking, perpendicular layers, held together the Latin term for a block of wood. composition, and temporary by the gummy sap exuded by the Parchment, which takes it writings, and these tablets were plant [Fig. 3]. Individual sheets name from the city of Pergamon often made in hinged pairs or sets, were joined together in rolls, which in western Anatolia, was the other essentially precursors to the the Egyptians used right to left and writing support used widely in parchment codex. Parchment the Greeks, who imported the Antiquity [Fig. 4]. Made from the codices allowed both sides of the material, used from left to right. skin of an animal which had been writing surface to be used The Greeks called papyrus khartes, soaked in lime, scraped of its flesh (impossible on a scroll) and made a word that has been transformed and hair, stretched on a frame and it much easier to refer to a to paper-related terms in many dried, parchment had long been particular passage in the text, modern languages, including carta used by the ancient Hebrews for because the reader did not have (Italian for paper) and our own copying their scriptures, the Torah. to “scroll through” the entire work card and chart. The Romans called The sheets, made from ritually- to find what he or she was looking the plant by the Latin term slaughtered animals, were sewn for. By the time of the revelation papyrus, which has also been together to form long rolls on which of Islam, the codex format was transformed into many other the text was written. Since an firmly established in western Asia paper-related terms, such as paper animal had to be killed to make a and the Mediterranean world as (English), papier (French and sheet of parchment, it was always the preferred format for , German), and papel (Spanish). much more expensive than particularly the Christian , The Greek word for a papyrus roll, papyrus, but it could be made with the notable exception of the biblios, has given rise to words anywhere (papyrus could only be Hebrew scriptures, which from Bible to bibliography, while produced in Egypt). Furthermore, continued to be copied on the Latin term for this same thing, parchment was more durable than parchment rolls, and diplomatic

22 Fig. 5. on parchment, 8/9th century CE. National Museum, New Delhi 59.187. Photograph © Daniel C. Waugh 2001. documents, which continued to be leather, wood and paper, which copied on vertical-format papyrus Soviet scholars discovered at the scrolls. remote site of Kala-i Mug [Zeymal’ 1996]. A few decades later in 762 The first copies of the entire the new Abbasid dynasty Fig. 6. Sogdian Ancient Letter No. 2, ca. 313 CE, found by Aurel Stein at text of the Quran, which Muslims transferred the capital of the Watch Tower T.XII.a on the Dunhuang believe is God’s revelation to Islamic empire from Damascus in Muhammad, were transcribed on Limes. BL Or.8212/95 R. Photograph Syria to in Iraq; this new © The British Library, used with per- parchment codices, although eastern focus, combined with the mission. All rights reserved. Nicholas papyrus, which was still produced government bureaucracy’s soaring Sims-Williams’ translation of the let- in Egypt (conquered by Muslim demand for records, led to the ter is online at . [Khan 1993]. Muslims visually differentiated copies of their Papermaking was begun in notaries began to use paper from scriptures from the Christian Bible Baghdad itself by the late 8th the late eleventh and twelfth by generally using a horizontal century. The city boasted a Suq centuries, although papermaking (“landscape”) format [Fig. 5]. al-warraqin (Stationers’ Market), a was not introduced, perhaps from When Muslim armies conquered street whose two sides were lined or from somewhere in the Central Asia in the late seventh and with more than one hundred shops Arab world, until the thirteenth. early eighth centuries, they for paper- and booksellers. From Once the Italians learned the art encountered paper for the first Iraq, papermaking was carried to of papermaking, they quickly time. It is often said that Muslim Syria, then Egypt, across North superseded their masters, armies captured Chinese Africa to and eventually producing large quantities of fine papermakers following the battle to Spain, where its use there is first paper more cheaply than anyone of Talas in 751, but this anecdote recorded by a tenth-century else, and they began exporting it is without factual basis and paper traveler. The first sheets of “Arab” to North African and West Asian had been known—and made—in paper appear in Spanish Christian markets. Central Asia for centuries. For manuscripts of the late tenth Few, if any, early Islamic example, archaeologists dis- century, where the sheets were writings on paper survive in their covered a mailbag containing substituted for the typical, but original format, although many of letters written on paper and more expensive, parchment. the texts written on them were addressed to a merchant in Eventually other Europeans recopied and preserved over the Samarqand in the fourth century learned of papermaking from the centuries. Excavations in Egypt [Fig. 6] [Sims-Williams 1987]. Muslims of Spain, particularly as show that paper increasingly Devastich, lord of Panjikent in Christians began to occupy larger replaced papyrus over the course Sogdia (now Tajikistan) until his portions of the Iberian peninsula of the ninth and tenth centuries; capture by the in 722, left and needed materials on which to by the middle of the tenth century an archive of 76 writings in record deeds and titles. Similarly papyrus was hardly used at all. Sogdian, and Chinese on in Sicily and , merchants and Meanwhile, paper spurred a burst

23 of extraordinary literary creativity throughout the Muslim lands. The increased numbers of texts known from the late eighth and ninth centuries in Iraq testifies to a vibrant literary culture in the major cities of the Abbasid realm. As is to be expected, most of the preserved writings from this period concern the religious sciences and auxiliary disciplines such as the history of the Prophet and early Islam, the grammar and vocab- ulary of the Arabic language, and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, which helped scholars understand the context for the revelation of the Quran. But new “secular” subjects increasingly find place in Arabic literature of the ninth century, Fig. 7. Manuscript of the Quran on paper, , Shiraz ca. 1560-1575. Museum including works on geography, of Islamic Art, Berlin, MIK I.142/68, open to the end of Sura 113 and beginning astronomy, medicine, mathe- of Sura 114. Photograph © Daniel C. Waugh 2004. matics, and literature. Indeed, the 1967]. The extraordinary numbers paper with some suspicion, earliest known manuscript version of volumes in them, even if because manuscripts of the Quran of the popular tales we now know exaggerated by a factor of ten or continued to be copied on as the Arabian Nights was copied more, testify to the flowering of parchment well into the tenth in ninth-century Egypt or Syria, a written culture in the Islamic lands century. The oldest dated copy of time when other, new types of during the medieval period that the Quran transcribed on paper really popular literature were also was made possible by the spread was produced, presumably in Iran, inexpensively copied on paper of paper and papermaking. In in 971-72 by the calligrapher Ali [Abbott 1938; Rice 1959]. Christian Europe, by contrast, ibn Shadhan al-Razi, whose name manuscript books were rare and indicates that he came from Rayy, Such texts indicate how costly. The library of a monastery a city located near modern Tehran. widespread paper became in this in eleventh-century Constan- These first Quran manuscripts on period. It was used not only by tinople, for example, had only paper were copied in scripts unlike Muslims but also by Christians and twelve books, of which eight were the stately “kufic” scripts Jews. For example, the oldest copied on paper, while the library traditionally used for copying the manuscript on “Arab” paper is of the Sorbonne in 1338, said to Quran on parchment and more like believed to be a copy of the be the finest library in the cursive scripts used by Doctrina Patrum, produced at Christendom, had only 338 books contemporary scribes for copying Damascus ca. 800 [Perria 1983- for consultation chained to reading literary works on paper. In time it 1984]. Hundreds of thousands of desks and another 1728 books became common to copy the documents dating from the ninth available for loan, although 300 of Quran on paper, except in Morocco to the thirteenth century that were them were listed as lost [Bloom and Spain, where parchment discovered in the nineteenth 2001, p. 117]. continued to be used for several century in the geniza or storeroom more centuries. Over the following of the Ben Ezra synagogue in The oldest known complete Arabic book copied on paper, centuries, calligraphers continued document the growing use of to develop new and more fluid paper among the merchant dating from 848, was recently discovered in a library in scripts to copy the Quran and other communities of the Mediterranean texts on paper, thereby lands for letters, contracts, Alexandria, Egypt; the second- oldest fragment is a well-known transforming the art of writing in inventories, and deeds [Goitein the Islamic lands [Fig. 7] [Blair 1967-1994]. manuscript dating from 866 in Leiden University Library about 2006]. The Cordoban library of the unusual terms in the traditions of In the thirteenth century the neo-Umayyad caliph al-Hakam II the Prophet. These two Mongol conquests in Central and was reputed to contain some manuscripts are valued for their Western Asia once again 400,000 volumes, many of which precise dates, but thousands of encouraged trade and com- must have been copied on paper. similar manuscripts must have munication along the routes linking Similar libraries are reported in been produced. Nevertheless China to the West, and during the medieval Cairo and Shiraz [Eche Muslims must have initially viewed ensuing Pax Mongolica men,

24 materials, and ideas moved back to have traveled across Eurasia to Europe was forgotten. Von and forth with relative freedom. At from east to west, but the evidence Richthofen was surely correct that this time papermakers in the is moot for perhaps the most the trade routes linking China to Islamic lands, particularly in Iran important technique in this regard: West Asia and the Mediterranean and Iraq developed techniques for , particularly with world played a crucial role in making larger and finer sheets of moveable type. This technique human history, but he was wrong paper which were used not only emerged in fifteenth-century to think that silk was the most as supports for magnificent Europe seemingly from nowhere, important good traded along those manuscripts but also as for although printing had been used routes. This brief investigation into drawings that served as inter- in China since the 8th century [Fig. the history of one of the most mediaries between designers and 8], and printing with moveable important, but least appreciated, craftsmen. It is tempting indeed type had been used there since the materials carried across Eurasia to think that the increased east- eleventh. As the use of printing in suggests that it might be time to west communication, documented the Islamic lands before the modify his original idea to reflect in a wide range of media and sixteenth century was restricted to the relative importance of the techniques, led to these technical a very few situations, none of them goods and ideas exchanged alone and conceptual developments in involving the production of books, these routes. In that case, the the Islamic lands, but the question it is virtually impossible to hypo- network would be more accurately is not yet settled [Bloom, in press]. thesize any connection—as known as the Paper Route. Certain techniques, such as the use tempting as it might be—between of pricked drawings and of gridded the development of printing in About the Author plans and drawings, can be shown China and in Europe. Jonathan Bloom shares the WhenNorma Jean Calderwood Europeans Professorship of Islamic and Asian eventually began Art at Boston College with his wife to investigate the Sheila Blair. His many publications history of paper, include Paper before Print (2001), they were initially Early Islamic Art and Architecture confused because (2002) and the forthcoming Arts all the words of the City Victorious: The Art and dealing with Architecture of the Fatimids. paper came from Among the books he has co- Greek and Latin authored with Professor Blair are words for papy- Islam: A Thousand Years of Faith rus, and they and Power (2000) and The Art and thought that Architecture of Islam: 1250-1800, paper must a volume in the Pelican History of somehow have Art which appeared to rave reviews been derived in 1994. He may be reached at from papyrus. . The first Euro- peans to en- References counter Chinese and Japanese Abbott 1938 in the Nabia Abbott. “A Ninth-Century sixteenth century Fragment of the ‘Thousand Nights’: imagined that New Light on the Early History of East Asians had the Arabian Nights.” Journal of somehow learned Near Eastern Studies, 8/3 (1938): to make paper 129–64. from the ancient Egyptians. Blair 2006 Eventually the Sheila S. Blair. Islamic Calligraphy. matter was Edinburgh: Edinburgh University cleared up, but Fig. 8. Manuscripts and prints obtained by Aurel Stein from Press, 2006. the pivotal role of the “Library Cave,” no. 17 of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang. Bloom, in press At the bottom is the earliest complete printed book, a copy the Islamic lands of the dated 868 CE (BL Or.8210/p.2). in the trans- Jonathan M. Bloom. “Paper: The Photograph © The British Library, used with permission. mission of paper- Transformative Medium in Ilkhanid All rights reserved. making from Asia Art and Architecture.” In Beyond

25 the Legacy of Genghis Khan. Ed. Perria 1983-1984 Sørensen and Marshak 1996 Linda Komaroff. Leiden: E. J. Brill, L. Perria. “Il Vat. Gr. 2200. Note Henrik H. Sørensen and B[oris] in press. codicologiche e paleografiche.” Marshak. “Silk Route.” The Bloom 2001 Revista di Studi Byzantini e Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. neoellenici, n.s., 20–21 (1983– Vol. 28. New York: Grove, 1996, Jonathan M. Bloom. Paper Before 84): 25–68. pp. 718-723. Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World. New Rice 1959 Soteriou 1999 Haven: Yale University Press, D. S. Rice. “The Oldest Illustrated Alexandra Soteriou. Gift of 2001. Arabic Manuscript.” Bulletin of the Conquerors: Hand Papermaking in Carswell 1985 School of Oriental and African India. Middletown, NJ: Grantha, Studies, 22 (1959): 207–20. 1999. John Carswell. Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and Its Impact Roberts and Skeat 1983 Tsien 1985 on the . Exhibition Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat. Tsien Tsuen-hsuin. Paper and Catalogue. Chicago: The David and The Birth of the Codex. : Printing. Science and Civilisation in Alfred Smart Gallery, University of Oxford University Press for the China. Ed. Joseph Needham. Vol. Chicago, 1985. See also his Blue British Academy, 1983. 5, pt. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge & White: Chinese Porcelain around University Press, 1985. the World (Chicago: Art Media Sims-Williams 1987 Resources, 2000). N[icholas] Sims-Williams. “Ancient Zeymal’ 1996 Eche 1967 Letters.” Encyclopaedia Iranica. Ed. T. I. Zeymal’. “Kala-i Mug.” The Ehsan Yarshater. Vol. 2. London; Dictionary of Art. Ed. Jane Turner. Youssef Eche. Les bibliothèques New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Vol. 17. New York: Grove, 1996, arabes publiques et semi- 1987, pp. 7-9. p. 735. publiques en Mésopotamie, en Syrie et en Égypte au moyen age. Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1967. Hunter 1974 Dard Hunter. Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft. New York: Dover, 1974 (original ed. 1943).

Goitein 1967-1994 S. D. Goitein. A Mediterranean Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967–94. Hoernle 1903 A. F. Rudolf Hoernle. “Who Was the Inventor of Rag-Paper?” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 43 (1903): 663–84. Khan 1993 Geoffrey Khan. Bills, Letters and Deeds: Arabic Papyri of the 7th to 11th Centuries. Edited by Julian Raby. The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art. London: The Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1993. Northwestern and Central Iran

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