Encyclopedia of Islam

books and bookmaking

---

tect the edges. Books were then stacked on top of 

each other on library shelves (which saved them 

from bending and warping).

Paper was sold at specialty shops or by book-

sellers whose shops were usually close to mosques 

and madrasas, since the scholars who studied and 

taught there were major consumers. Booksellers 

acted as publishers and distributors of books and 

conducted searches for rare works on demand. 

They were one link in the chain of knowledge 

dissemination that began with authors. An author 

published his work either by writing the first 

copy himself or dictating it to scribes or 

stU

-

dents

. Scribes compared copies to ensure accu-

racy before selling them. A student had to read 

the book back to the teacher-author (sometimes 

in the presence of witnesses) before obtaining an 

ijaza (permission; certificate) to teach and publish 

the work himself. The ijaza and its circumstances 

were always noted on the manuscript copy, so that 

copyright and accuracy were maintained through 

combined oral-written means. In teaching and 

dictating the book to his own students, the origi-

nal student became part of the chain of authorized 

transmitters of the author’s work.

Scholars sometimes traveled to find an author-

itative transmitter of a specific work. Alterna-

tively, visiting scholars dictated or authorized 

readings of their own works during their travels. 

In these ways, knowledge was exchanged, shared, 

and passed down for generations, often with com-

mentaries that were either published separately 

or added to a book as marginalia (notes written 

in the margins of the book). Commentaries were 

often as important as the original works. They 

corrected scribal errors, provided cross-references, 

or glossed terms, names, and concepts that were 

no longer familiar (and so aid us in understand-

ing the originals today). They also sometimes 

questioned the content, thereby providing written 

records of the processes of reasoning and disputa-

tion among scholars. Reasoning and questioning 

(which required additional proof) were applied in 

all areas, from 

mathematics

 to religious law (

fiqh

), 

thereby always advancing the state of knowledge 

in any field by eschewing blind dogma—the “hal-

ter” mentioned by Adelard of Bath.

The first great boom in paper and book pro-

duction in Islamdom occurred in ninth- and 10th-

century  i

raq

, when the Abbasids realized paper’s 

potential in administering their vast empire, col-

lecting past knowledge, and disseminating their 

own laws and histories. This boom revolved around 

b

aghdad

, the capital and cultural center. It resulted 

in changes that ranged from the format of books, to 

scripts, to the conduct of everyday life. These pro-

cesses continued to develop over centuries before 

the wide adoption of print. Despite great losses 

due to time, fire, or recycling of paper and books 

into new works, thousands of written works have 

survived. Aside from many q

Uran

 manuscripts 

and books on Islamic religion and history, they also 

include translations and commentaries on Greek 

works in philosophy, medicine, and geography 

that would not have survived or reached Europe 

(or reached it in understandable form) otherwise. 

Nor would we have the glimpses of daily life that 

we have from the thousands of scraps of paper 

that were discovered in an old synagogue in c

airo

(the Geniza). From the paper and book industries, 

we know the bases of the maps that aided Euro-

pean voyages in the 15th century, as well as how 

a brother and sister consoled each other in letters 

that traveled across great distances in the 10th.

See also 

calligraphy

; 

edUcation

; 

literacy

; 

madrasa

.

Nuha N. N. Khoury