Printing

Printing

By: Faysal Burhan
Initial Publication: 2002, from www.islamicity.com

Legend has it that during Abbasid rule, Abbasid authorities obtained the secret of papermaking from two Chinese prisoners captured at the Battle of Talas in 751, leading to the foundation of the first paper mill in the Islamic world in Samarkand. The invention then spread to the rest of the Islamic world and
from there to Europe.

What is Taught:
Johannes Gutenberg of Germany invented movable type and the printing press in the West during the 15th century.

What Should be Taught:
In 1454, Gutenberg developed the most sophisticated printing press of the Middle Ages. However, movable brass type had been in use in Islamic Spain 100 years earlier, where the West’s first printing devices were made; paper use began in the 7th century.

Like the printing press, typewriter, and computer, the paper has been a crucial agent for disseminating information. This engaging book presents an important new chapter in the paper’s history: 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 8th 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.

Printed Astronomy Textbook
Jonathan Bloom traces paper’s earliest history—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 paper’s impact on writing, books, mathematics, music, art, architecture, and even cooking. He also discusses why Europe was so quick to adopt paper from the Islamic lands and why the Islamic lands were so slow to adopt printing in return.

Illustration-Book of Kings
Together, the beautifully written text and delightful illustrations (of papermaking techniques and the many uses of paper) give new luster and importance to a now-humble material.

From a review of the book, “PAPER BEFORE PRINT: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World” by Jonathan M. Bloom.
Muslims originally brought paper from China. It followed the battle of Tallas (751) fought between Chinese and Muslims when the Chinese prisoners revealed the secret of papermaking.

As an art, the Muslims developed it into a major industry. They used linen as a substitute for the mulberry bark the Chinese used. They disintegrated linen rags, saturated them with water, and let them ferment. They then boiled the rags to remove alkaline residue and much of the dirt, then beat them into a pulp with a trip-hammer, an improved maceration method invented by the Muslims.

In Baghdad, many paper mills were built, and from there, the industry spread to various parts of the world. The paper mills constructed in Damascus were major suppliers to Europe; as production increased, paper became cheaper, more available, and higher quality.

Al-Biruni Lunar Eclipse Theory
Paper mills, which first flourished in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, spread westward. Africa saw its first paper mill built in Egypt around 850. A paper mill was built in Morocco; from there, it reached Spain by 950. The center of fabrication was Xatiba. From Spain and Sicily, papermaking spread to the Christians in Spain and Italy. The first written reference to paper in the Christian West appears in the pseudonymous Theophilus Presbyter’s “The Art of the Painter” (first half of the 12th century). In 1293 the first paper mill was set up in Bologna.

In 1309, England was the first to use paper, followed by Germany in the late 14th century. Down through the close of the Middle Ages, the most important papermaking centers were in Northern Italy. Of course, paper seems so ordinary today, but it is fundamental to modern civilization.

By using this new material, paper, and manufacturing it on a large scale, devising new methods for its production, the Muslims accomplished, in the words of Pedersen, “the Muslims accomplished a feat of crucial significance not only to the history of the Islamic book but also to the whole world of books.” The decisive impact of Muslim paper production was, obviously and directly, to bring about a revolution that paved the way for the invention of printing. 

By: FSTC Limited, Fri 10 January 2003
The Arabs gave a large part of the world a religion, Islam, a language, and an alphabet. Where the Muslim religion went, the Arabic language and Arabic writing also went. Arabic became, and has remained, the national language, the mother tongue, of North Africa and all the Arab countries of the Middle East. Of those who embraced Islam but did not adopt Arabic as their everyday language, many millions have taken the Arabic alphabet for their own. Today, one sees the Arabic script used to write languages with no basic etymological connection with Arabic.

The languages of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are all written in the Arabic alphabet, as was Turkey’s language until some fifty years ago. It is also used in Kashmir and in some places on the Malay Peninsula and in the East Indies, and in Africa, in Somalia and along the east coast as far south as Tanzania.

Ibn_al-Baitar Botanical Book
Another significant difference is that Arabic script has been used much more extensively for decoration and artistic expression. This is not to say that the Roman alphabet (and others such as the Chinese and Japanese, for instance) are not just as decorative or as imaginatively used. Since the invention of printing from type, however, calligraphy (literally “beautiful writing”) has been used in English and other European languages only for special documents and on special occasions, and has declined to a relatively minor art.

In countries that use the Arabic alphabet, calligraphy has continued to be used not only on important documents but also for a variety of other artistic purposes. One reason is that the cursive nature of the Arabic script and other peculiarities made its adaptation to printing difficult and delayed the introduction of the printing press, so that the Arab world continued for some centuries, after the time of Gutenberg, to rely on handwriting for the production of books (especially the Quran) and of legal and other documents.

Therefore, Arabic script tended to develop toward calligraphy and artistically pleasing forms of hand lettering. In the West, the trend has been toward printing and developing ornamental, sometimes elaborate, typefaces.

Another, perhaps more important, reason was religious. The Quran nowhere prohibits representing humans or animals in drawings or paintings. Still, as Islam expanded in its early years, it inherited prejudices against this kind of visual art that had already taken root in the Middle East. Besides, the early Muslims tended to oppose figural art (and all art) as distracting the community from God’s worship and hostile to the strictly unitarian religion—the creed of Salafism.

Wherever artistic ornamentation and decoration were required, therefore, Muslim artists, forbidden to depict human or animal forms, for the most part, were forced to resort either to what has since come to be known as “arabesque” (designs based on strictly geometrical forms or patterns of leaves and flowers) or, very often, to calligraphy.

Arabic calligraphy, therefore, came to be used not only in producing copies of the Quran (its first and for many centuries its most important use), but also for all kinds of other artistic purposes as well on porcelain and metalware, for carpets and other textiles, on coins, and as an architectural ornament (primarily on mosques and tombs but also, especially in later years, on other buildings as well).

—From  www.islamicity.com