Islamic Civilization

The Paper  Industry

 Paper  was possibly one of the most important of all accomplishments in the history of humanity, but just like Arabic numerals, this innovation because so ordinary, its true implications have never been adequately seized. Before paper, writing was done on papyrus, skins, and even stones; scarcity of parchment made books extremely costly to produce.[1] To find a substance capable of replacing parchment, and similar to papyrus, was going to render immense services to the diffusion of learning.[2]

  Paper , originally, was taken by the Muslims from the Chinese ; a craft they developed into a major industry.[3]The paper-making process is explained by Hunter, primarily, that the Muslims employed linen as a substitute to the bark of the mulberry tree for their paper, and to beat the cleansed rags to a pulp, a trip hammer was put to use, and improved method of maceration, which was invented by the Muslims.[4]

 In Baghdad  were built many paper mills, and from there, the industry spread to Syria  and Palestine, and made the way West. Africa saw its first paper mill built in Egypt  around 850; a paper mill was then built in Morocco , from there, of course, it was to reach Spain; 950 being the date of the earliest use of paper in Spain.[5]The centre of fabrication was  Xatiba, near Valencia , but ruins of early mills in Spain could also be seen on Cordoba's river bank, and some in working order could still be seen at Al-Qantara.[6]

 The first written reference to paper in the Christian West  seems to be in the pseudonymous Theophilus Presbyter's "The Art of the Painter" (first half of the 12^th century).[7] In the 12^th century French pilgrims who visited St Vincent de Compostela took back with them scraps of paper to France, considering them objects of immense curiosity.[8]

The shift in production from Islam to Western Christendom  took place in the 13^th century when Valencia  was captured from the Muslims (in 1238.) During the 13^th century, paper was exported to Sicily  from both Barcelona  and Valencia.[9] The Valencian  exports doubtless originated in Xativa, where the Muslim community received royal support for the continued production of paper; and virtual monopoly in the kingdom of Valencia, but also prohibition against producing paper anywhere but in Xativa, this was probably indicative of the deliberate concentration of that industry there.[10] In Christian Spain, the gathering of rags for the paper industry was a profession in itself, as evidenced by a grant by the King of Aragon in 1287, empowering two citizens of Menorca to search for cloth scraps with which to make paper.[11]  From Spain and Sicily paper making spread to Christian Spain and Italy.[12]

The Italian pioneering in paper production within Western Christendom  owes once more to the impact of the crusades. When the mastery of the sea fell to the Italian republics, which had given first assistance to the crusades, Western tradesmen purchased from the Levant paper called charta damascena for which was used as a raw material rags of linen, and there were many ways to colour it.[13]This Italian-Eastern connection is found in the name for paper carta cuttonea, derived from the Arab word for linen, kattan.[14] Paper  sold in the south of Europe was taken north to cities and fairs, and soon the Italians  started producing paper themselves, in 1250 near Ancona was set up a centre to supply Europe with paper.[15] In 1293 was set up the first paper mill in Bologna.[16] Germany followed suite in the late stages of the 14^th.[17] Down to the close of the Middle Ages, though, the most important paper making centres were in North Italy.[18]

Typically, just as in the Islamic model, the West almost immediately began to use water power to process the pulp.[19] Indeed, when paper making spread from the Muslim world into other parts of Europe, the process of pounding fibres into pulp was always carried out mechanically, with a water wheel driving a cam shaft to operate trip hammers.[20] It used to be thought that this was a distinctly European development, however, it is now known that there were many water mills in the vicinity of Baghdad , and that water power was applied to paper making in that region for two or more centuries earlier than in Europe.[21]

The importance of paper for the diffusion of knowledge is incalculable, of course.[22] The Europeans of the Middle Ages only wrote, and for very long, on parchment, papyrus having passed out of general use, and paper not yet having been introduced into the West.[23] Parchment was both expensive and rare, hence a serious obstacle to the multiplication of written works; so scarce, Le Bon notes, the monks took the habit of erasing the works of the great scholars of Greece  and Rome to replace them with their homelies.[24] Hence without the Muslims, most masterpieces of Antiquity, which are presented to us as having been well preserved, would have been lost.[25] Thanks to the abundance of paper, just as previously under Islam, book production changed from a craft into a manufacture. Hence, in this respect, as Pedersen remarks, 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.[26]

Manufacture of paper was also to prepare the way for the invention of printing.[27] Without paper, Hitti explains, printing from movable type, invented in Germany around the middle of the 15^th would not have been successful, and without paper and printing, popular education in Europe, on the scale it developed, would have been impossible.[28]