By Saulat Pervez
Muslims transformed
the Chinese art of papermaking into a major industry as early as the eighth century!
Muslims learned the
secret of papermaking from Chinese prisoners captured during the battle of
Talas in 751 A.D. Before long, paper began to be manufactured in Samarkand, the
very first Muslim hub of papermaking. By 793 A.D., there were many paper mills
in Baghdad; as with all other major developments in the Muslim world, paper
production soon spread to Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily and Spain. From a
Chinese art, paper was thus transformed into a major industry by the Muslims.
This was a
revolutionary development, because the existing alternatives to paper were
papyrus, which was fragile, and parchment, which was expensive; paper, on the
other hand, was relatively cheap, because it was made out of cotton – and
Muslims made its manufacturing more efficient through the use of water-powered
mills. This mass availability of paper enabled Muslims to commit vast amounts
of translations and original research to paper; as a result, libraries and
bookstores thrived and became a common sight in Baghdad and in other Muslim
cities.
For example, by the
thirteenth century, Baghdad had thirty-six libraries and a 100 book dealers,
some of whom were also publishers. The concept of a library catalog dates back
to this period - books in these libraries were organized under specific genres
and categories. Besides these, many nobles and merchants had private
collections of books.
“We hear of a private
library in Baghdad, as early as the ninth century, which required a hundred and
twenty camels to move it from one place to another. Another scholar of Baghdad
refused to accept a position elsewhere, because it would take four hundred
camels to transport his books; the catalogue of this private library filled ten
volumes. This is the more astonishing, when it is realized that the library of
the king of France in 1300 had only about four hundred titles,” writes
Frederick Artz in his book “The Mind of the Middle Ages”.
Furthermore, James
Burke notes of Cordoba in Muslim Spain: "Paper, a material still unknown
to the west, was everywhere. There were bookshops and more than seventy
libraries."
In fact, this was the
case because the very first paper mill in medieval Europe was established as
late as 1268 A.D. in Italy and appeared in other major countries, such as
Germany and France, centuries later.
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