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 iraq, 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
baghdad, 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 qUran 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 cairo
(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. KhouryBibliography: Jonathan M. Bloom, Paper before Print:
The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001);
James Burke, The Day the Universe Changed. Rev. ed.
(Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1995); Brinkley
Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination
and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993); Johannes Pederson, The Arabic
Book. Translated by Geoffrey French (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1984).books and bookmaking 113 J