Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Jonah Blank, Mullahs on the Main-

frame: Islam and Modernity among the Daudi Bohras

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Farhad 

Daftary,  A Short History of the Ismailis: Traditions of a 

Muslim Community (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener 

Publishers, 1998).

books and bookmaking

The 10th-century royal of c

ordoba

 (one of more 

than 70 in the Umayyad capital of Spain) had a 

catalog of 44 volumes listing more than 400,000 

titles. The catalog volumes alone outnumbered 

the total number of books in medieval France, 

despite such important universities as those of 

books and bookmaking

  

111  J

---

Paris and Chartres. Adelard, a 12th-century Eng-

lishman from Bath who traveled through s

yria

, 

p

alestine

, Sicily, and Toledo (where many of the 

Cordoban books and scholars resided after the city 

fell to the northern kings during the Reconquista) 

brought back two treasures: an Arabic translation 

and commentary on Euclid’s Geometry and ratio-

nalism. “The further south you go,” he said, “the 

more they know. They know how to think. From 

the Arabs I have learned one thing: if you are led 

by authority, that means you are led by a halter.” 

The lesson took root slowly, but a few hundred 

years later Europe entered its Age of Reason and 

the Enlightenment.

The wealth of knowledge and habits of rea-

soning encountered by Adelard and numerous 

European travelers resulted from practical and 

intellectual undertakings that were supported 

by, and in turn enabled, a number of activities 

and industries, from bookmaking to administra-

tion and international trade. The major medium 

involved was paper, whose technology was avail-

able in the eastern parts of Islamdom (Samarqand 

in Central Asia) and that was quickly adopted 

by the Abbasids in the eighth century. Paper was 

invaluable for official documents and bank drafts 

because it was difficult to change once the ink was 

absorbed (unlike vellum, which could be scraped 

clean). Paper was also relatively cheap to make, 

as it was manufactured from rags produced from 

flax. This made it part of the agricultural and 

textile industries, as well as recycling and garbage 

collecting activities. The flax grown in e

gypt

 was 

used in making linen, which could be reused in 

making paper (a by-product was cheap flaxseed 

lamp oil). A single excavation campaign at Fustat 

(c

airo

’s medieval industrial and commercial hub) 

produced hundreds of thousands of rags that were 

earmarked for recycling into paper, a process that 

required the water of the nearby Nile for pulping 

and milling. (Today in Cairo the old community 

of garbage collectors is once again recycling scrap 

rag into paper products that are sold to tourists.) 

Paper was also part of the informal economy of 

Egypt; graverobbers sold linen shrouds to manu-

facturers who then recycled them into paper. 

In 10th-century Egypt, as elsewhere, paper and 

books depended on cities whose schools pro-

duced the literate consuming public and whose 

shops, banks, and take-out restaurants required 

paper as a primary or packaging material.

Collecting raw materials was only the first step 

in paper- and bookmaking. Sheets of paper were 

made in molds, then sized (sealed) and polished to 

produce an adequate writing surface. Sheets were 

either stacked or folded four times to produce 

quartos that were then sewn together. Inks, pens, 

and bindings of different materials (not to men-

tion metal inkwells, wood bookstands, and other 

paraphernalia) were part of the writing craft, and 

professional scribes usually made their own inks 

and pens. Luxury editions (often commissioned 

or produced in royal workshops) demanded 

another crew of specialists that included paint-

ers (for illustrations), illuminators (for marginal 

decoration), and gilders, as well as overseers who 

coordinated the work. The finished pages were 

polished again with a smooth stone (preferably an 

agate) before they were bound in tooled leather or 

papier maché covers. Sometimes the bound book 

was slipped into a case with folding flaps to pro-

Cairo bookbinder Hisham proudly exhibits his crafts-

manship  

(Juan E. Campo)

K  112