Paris and Chartres. Adelard, a 12th-century Eng-
lishman from Bath who traveled through syria,
palestine, 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 egypt 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
(cairo’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 books and bookmaking