The Golden Age in the East

Warm-Up: Describe the pictures below.

Objectives To be able to identify the cultural contributions of the Muslim Empire. Standard: 7.2.6 Understand the intellectual exchanges among the Muslim scholars and the contributions made in the areas of literature and writing.

Papermaking in China Papermaker making originated in China during the Han Dynasty and was spread via the silk road. Papermaking was spread to Europe and Africa by the Muslims. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y- Gg_6Zgbz4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y- Gg_6Zgbz4 The first use of paper has been excavated in China dating to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han from the 2nd century BC, used for purposes of wrapping or padding protection for delicate bronze mirrors.[10] It was also used for safety, such as the padding of poisonous 'medicine' as mentioned in the official history of the period.Muslims were responsible for the transfer of papermaking from China, where it had been invented in the centuries before Christ, to Europe, where it fueled the print revolution in the late fifteenth century. In fact, the term used to describe bundles of paper, reams, comes from the Arabic word rizma.

Papermaking in China

Papermaking in the Muslim Empire Muslims encountered paper when they conquered Central Asia in the eighth century. In the late 700s, enough paper was produced to replace papyrus for record keeping purposes. By the middle of the 9th century Baghdad had more than 100 shops in which paper and books were sold. The Abbasids opened the House of Wisdom in Baghdad to meet the demands of knowledge and literature. According to an 11th century historian, Chinese prisoners captured in the battle of Talas in 751 taught the techniques to the Muslims. The Muslims substituted linen for the materials used by the Chinese. This made the paper sturdier. Papyrus was made from the inner part of reeds. Parchment was made from animal skins. Paper could be made virtually anywhere from rags and waste fibers. Although it was not cheap, paper had the great advantage of being difficult to erase, an important consideration when documents and records had to be secure from forgery. The use of paper soon spread from government offices to all segments of society. Medieval Islamic society had a paper economy, where both wholesale and retail merchants conducted commerce on credit. Orders of payment, the equivalent of modern checks (the Persian word sakk is the origin of our word "check"), were drawn in amounts upwards from one dinar (a gold coin roughly equivalent to half a month's salary). By the ninth century paper was used for copying scientific and other types of utilitarian texts, although it took longer for Muslims to accept the use of paper as a fitting support for God's word. The first paper manuscript of the Koran to survive dates from 972, but from this date paper soon became standard for all books. Medieval Islamic libraries had hundreds of thousands of volumes far outstripping the relatively small monastic and university libraries in the West.

Al Jahiz Literature and Poetry flourished during the Abbasid period. Al-Jahiz began his career as a writer in Basra, Iraq. He was born as Abu Uthman Amir Ibn Bakr al Fuqaimi al-Basri better known as Al-Jahiz. Al-Jahiz wrote an essay on the institution of the caliphate which gained approval from the court in Baghdad. This began his career. He wrote over 200 books in which 30 have survived. One is called the art of keeping one’s mouth shout. The book of animals is his most famous book in which he received $5,000 gold dinars. He died in 868 as a result of an accident in which he was crushed to death by a collapsing pile of books in his private library. A fitting death for a writer.

Parchment Paper Parchment is a material made from animal skin. Its most common use was as a material for writing on, for documents, notes, or the pages of a book, codex or manuscript. Parchment is limed, scraped and dried under tension.

Parchment