The Role of the Arabs in the Introduction of Paper in Europe
Abdul Hannawi

Abstract

Although papyrus, prepared from the stalks of papyrus (a plant indigenous to Egypt only) was invented by the Egyptians ca. 3000 BC and was used for millennia all over the civilized world, real paper, prepared from the macerated fibers of vegetable plants, was not known until the beginning of the second century AD. It was invented in China by a high official of the royal court in 105 AD. The Chinese kept the manufacturing of paper a state secret and monopoly. There is evidence that the Chinese paper was shipped to other parts of the world including the Middle East. However, the secret of its manufacturing had to wait ca. 650 years to be known in other parts of the world. The breakthrough came in the year 751 AD when the representative of the Abbasids in Khurasan (in Eastern Persia) Abu Muslim al-Khurasani commissioned Ziad ibn Salih, the Arab governor of Samarkand in the Turkestan region, to subdue one of the Turkic tribes to the northeast who had allied itself with the Chinese. As a result of the fierce battle some Chinese prisoners of war who happened to be papermakers were captured and brought back to Samarkand. It was they who first divulged the secret of papermaking and built mills for its manufacturing in Samarkand. Shortly thereafter, paper mills spread to other places in Khurasan.

The Caliphs in Baghdad were reluctant at first to allow the manufacturing of paper and its use in the government offices until the Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809) was persuaded by his Grand Vizir Jafar al-Barmaki to allow the establishment of the first paper mill in Baghdad. From Baghdad the papermaking industry spread to other parts of the Islamic Empire: Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Egypt and then Andalusia in southern Spain which was under Arab rule since the beginning of the eight century. The city of Xativa in southeastern Spain was the center of the paper industry. It is probable that from Xativa the art of papermaking spread to other European cities or it might have been brought directly from the Middle East by the Crusaders. The papermaking industry was then established in the island of Sicily and the Italian city of Fabriano where paper of excellent quality was produced since 1270. Paper mills were also started in France, as legend has it, by a Crusader who was imprisoned in Syria and was forced to labor in a Damascus paper mill. The Fabriano paper craftsmen soon established paper mills in other parts of Europe. In Germany, the papermaking industry was established in Nuremberg in 1390 by a German merchant who learned it at Fabriano. In England the first paper mill was started in 1495. In the Middle East, whence the papermaking industry came to Europe, the craft deteriorated until it was completely forgotten and the countries of the Middle East had to rely for their consumption on paper manufactured in Italy and other European countries.