So, where were we, ah yes, CHINA, about the time of Christ, making paper (the Chinese that is, not Jesus. He was here for greater things, apparently) Some sources have it that the raw materials used were old fishing nets and ropes, which, while being valuable sources of raw material right up until fairly recently, this is pretty unlikely at that time. Chinese paper, back then, was made from the bast fibres of the paper mulberry which makes a great deal of sense because the Chinese were already cultivating the plant/shrub for their silk moths, whose caterpillars greedily munched their way through the leaves. Some time later, around 650 C.E. the Chinese started to make a 'new' type of paper during the reign of the Emperor Kao Tsung, made from a form of hemp fibre (the so-called China Grass), and so durable was this new paper that, having been perfected in 715 was adopted as the official paper for copying an Emperor's decrees.
Although the Chinese kept their method of making paper a closely guarded secret, the product itself was widely traded along the length of the Silk Road, certainly as far as the west of Asia Minor, and after a conflict between the Soghdian Turks and the Arabs under Ziyad ibn Salih (who won) paper came to be made at Samarqand from 715 C.E. by Chinese papermakers captured as prisoners of war. What they were doing there prior to the conflict is a little uncertain, some reading of the literature creates the impression that they were already P.o.W.'s of the Arabs, while from a different perspective that they were unlucky to be at Samarqand when 'the storm broke'. A further hypothosis suggests that they were doing their national service, or maybe press ganged into the Chinese army, and their papermaking skills as far as the Chinese army was concerned was of no importance whatsoever. The reality is that none of this is true, though it is a memorable story, and what the late Terry Pratchett referred to as "lies to children", Paper had been travelling along The Silk Road for centuries by then, the Arabs did not bother to make it, paper was a freely traded commodity. Just why they started to produce it themselves is probably tied-up with Islamic history.
To quote from the excellent translation by the late Don Baker and Suzy Dittmar, of Joseph von Karabacel's ARAB PAPER 1887 (translation originally published as a monograph by Islington Books, 1991) "This paper from Samarqand, originally known as Chinese paper, soon found a wide market which raised the commercial importance of the town. Not without reason was it said of the people of Khurasan that they were so skilled in the arts that their country might be a piece of China itself. They were good apprentices of their Chinese teachers and for quite a long time managed to hold a monopoly of the craft of papermaking. No paper was made [at that time] outside China with the exception of Samarqand. As soon as the Arabs learned how, the knowledge spread quickly across the whole [Islamic] world....This new product, which became famous throughout the Islamic world under the name 'Samarqand Paper' or by geographically wider term 'Khurasan Paper', represents a great step forward in the making of paper pulp. It was a victory of foreign ingenuity over the inventiveness of the Chinese. As soon as they had learned the basic principle of felting paper, that is, making a paper pulp of finely separated fibres and ladling it onto the paper mould, they started to use rags to make the new writing material."
The Arabs also added a removable mould cover, so that the same mould could be used over and again, whereas the Oriental method consumed one mould per sheet until it was dry (in the sun) and then peeled off, before the mould could be used again. The Arabian method allowed for the newly formed sheet to be rolled-up from the face of the mould, and a fresh cover attached. The paper plus rolled cover could then be taken away to be dried until the paper fell off. There are tales of people chasing newly dried sheets of paper through the bazaars in windy weather!
I have quoted heavily from the book, partly because though I hardly knew him, Don Baker left me with the image of a kind and generous man, whose early death was a great loss to the paper history community, and the world in general, but also because there are several nuggets that can be picked from the paragraphs quoted above. First of course there is the confirmation that paper was indeed of Chinese origin, its manner of manufacture being a closely kept secret until the Arabs got hold of it. There is also the news that it is to the Arabs, not the Chinese, that we owe a debt for the spread of paper making "Throughout the world" – albeit at that time, the Islamic world – which was then, as now, pretty extensive! Another fact is that the Islamic papers – and thus the product copied by the 'Western World' – soon became made from linen rags, i.e. pre-manufactured flax fibres, broken-down and re-made into paper. There was no commercial cultivation of the flax plant in that area at that time, so RAGS were the raw material of choice, linen rags, not cotton. Cotton would not find an important rôle in paper making for hundreds of years to come. Finally, the Chinese and by inference the Arabic way of producing paper, was that of ladling the very dilute pulp onto the paper mould, quite different to the Western method where the mould is dipped into a vat of diluted fibres, shaken gently to entwine the fibrils of the fibres, and then 'couched' from the mould onto felts. This allows one (or more usually, two) mould(s) to be used continuously, whilst the Chinese method tied-up the use of the mould until the paper was dry enough to be peeled off (while the Arabian method was a step in the right direction.)
In the West, another sheet is made in the same way as the first, and then couched onto the back of the first felt, and so on until a stack or 'post' is created, which is then taken away to be pressed to crush out most of the water remaining in the sheet, and bond the paper fibres further. The chemical attraction of one fibril to another(hydrogen bonding) also plays a very important part in sheet formation.
Although the Chinese kept their method of making paper a closely guarded secret, the product itself was widely traded along the length of the Silk Road, certainly as far as the west of Asia Minor, and after a conflict between the Soghdian Turks and the Arabs under Ziyad ibn Salih (who won) paper came to be made at Samarqand from 715 C.E. by Chinese papermakers captured as prisoners of war. What they were doing there prior to the conflict is a little uncertain, some reading of the literature creates the impression that they were already P.o.W.'s of the Arabs, while from a different perspective that they were unlucky to be at Samarqand when 'the storm broke'. A further hypothosis suggests that they were doing their national service, or maybe press ganged into the Chinese army, and their papermaking skills as far as the Chinese army was concerned was of no importance whatsoever. The reality is that none of this is true, though it is a memorable story, and what the late Terry Pratchett referred to as "lies to children", Paper had been travelling along The Silk Road for centuries by then, the Arabs did not bother to make it, paper was a freely traded commodity. Just why they started to produce it themselves is probably tied-up with Islamic history.
To quote from the excellent translation by the late Don Baker and Suzy Dittmar, of Joseph von Karabacel's ARAB PAPER 1887 (translation originally published as a monograph by Islington Books, 1991) "This paper from Samarqand, originally known as Chinese paper, soon found a wide market which raised the commercial importance of the town. Not without reason was it said of the people of Khurasan that they were so skilled in the arts that their country might be a piece of China itself. They were good apprentices of their Chinese teachers and for quite a long time managed to hold a monopoly of the craft of papermaking. No paper was made [at that time] outside China with the exception of Samarqand. As soon as the Arabs learned how, the knowledge spread quickly across the whole [Islamic] world....This new product, which became famous throughout the Islamic world under the name 'Samarqand Paper' or by geographically wider term 'Khurasan Paper', represents a great step forward in the making of paper pulp. It was a victory of foreign ingenuity over the inventiveness of the Chinese. As soon as they had learned the basic principle of felting paper, that is, making a paper pulp of finely separated fibres and ladling it onto the paper mould, they started to use rags to make the new writing material."
The Arabs also added a removable mould cover, so that the same mould could be used over and again, whereas the Oriental method consumed one mould per sheet until it was dry (in the sun) and then peeled off, before the mould could be used again. The Arabian method allowed for the newly formed sheet to be rolled-up from the face of the mould, and a fresh cover attached. The paper plus rolled cover could then be taken away to be dried until the paper fell off. There are tales of people chasing newly dried sheets of paper through the bazaars in windy weather!
I have quoted heavily from the book, partly because though I hardly knew him, Don Baker left me with the image of a kind and generous man, whose early death was a great loss to the paper history community, and the world in general, but also because there are several nuggets that can be picked from the paragraphs quoted above. First of course there is the confirmation that paper was indeed of Chinese origin, its manner of manufacture being a closely kept secret until the Arabs got hold of it. There is also the news that it is to the Arabs, not the Chinese, that we owe a debt for the spread of paper making "Throughout the world" – albeit at that time, the Islamic world – which was then, as now, pretty extensive! Another fact is that the Islamic papers – and thus the product copied by the 'Western World' – soon became made from linen rags, i.e. pre-manufactured flax fibres, broken-down and re-made into paper. There was no commercial cultivation of the flax plant in that area at that time, so RAGS were the raw material of choice, linen rags, not cotton. Cotton would not find an important rôle in paper making for hundreds of years to come. Finally, the Chinese and by inference the Arabic way of producing paper, was that of ladling the very dilute pulp onto the paper mould, quite different to the Western method where the mould is dipped into a vat of diluted fibres, shaken gently to entwine the fibrils of the fibres, and then 'couched' from the mould onto felts. This allows one (or more usually, two) mould(s) to be used continuously, whilst the Chinese method tied-up the use of the mould until the paper was dry enough to be peeled off (while the Arabian method was a step in the right direction.)
In the West, another sheet is made in the same way as the first, and then couched onto the back of the first felt, and so on until a stack or 'post' is created, which is then taken away to be pressed to crush out most of the water remaining in the sheet, and bond the paper fibres further. The chemical attraction of one fibril to another(hydrogen bonding) also plays a very important part in sheet formation.