Latest / Tamerlane: The Conqueror Who Tried to Rebuild the Mongol Legacy — Fexingo History / Tamerlane's Captive Chinese Printers: The Samarkand Printing Press
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Tamerlane bringing captive artisans to Samarkand — weavers, tilemakers, goldsmiths, papermakers. But there's one craft we haven't touched on, and it might be the most surprising of all: printing. Luna: Printing? In the 14th century? You mean like block printing? Lucas: Exactly. Woodblock printing had been around in China for centuries by then, and it had spread along the Silk Road — but it hadn't really taken hold in the Islamic world. Tamerlane's conquests changed that, at least for a moment. In 1394, during his campaign in the region of Khwarezm, his forces captured a group of Chinese craftsmen who were skilled in printing. They were brought to Samarkand, along with their tools and techniques. Luna: So there was actually a printing press in Samarkand? Lucas: That's the tantalizing possibility. We don't have a physical press that survived, but we have clues. The Arab historian Ibn Arabshah, who was captured by Tamerlane as a boy and wrote a hostile biography of him, mentions that among the goods brought from China were ‘pieces of paper with black marks that were all identical.’ He's clearly describing printed sheets. And we know from other sources that the Timurid court produced block-printed amulets and talismans — small sheets with prayers and magical squares, stamped in ink. Luna: Were those just for religious use, or did they print other things too? Lucas: Probably administrative documents as well. The Mongol Ilkhanate had used block-printed paper money in Iran a century earlier — that was a disaster, economically, but it showed the technology was known. Tamerlane's own chancery might have used printed forms for tax receipts or official decrees. The scholar Thomas Allsen, who wrote extensively about Mongol-era cultural exchange, argues that the Timurids had both the know-how and the demand for printing, especially for mass-producing talismans, which were hugely popular. Luna: So why didn't it catch on? Why isn't Tamerlane remembered as the guy who brought the printing press to the West? Lucas: Great question. Part of it is that printing in the Islamic world faced religious and aesthetic resistance. Calligraphers had a high status, and the ulema — the religious scholars — preferred handwritten Quranic texts. There's also the fact that Tamerlane's empire fragmented after his death. The captive printers probably didn't train many local apprentices, and the specialist knowledge died out. But there's another possibility: that the technology did survive, quietly, and eventually made its way to Europe via the Silk Road, influencing Gutenberg. Luna: Wait — are you saying Gutenberg might have gotten the idea from Central Asia? Lucas: It's a theory. We know that movable type was invented in China in the 11th century, and that Korean metal type predates Gutenberg by decades. Trade routes carried knowledge as well as goods. There's no direct link from Samarkand to Mainz, but it's not impossible that reports of printed amulets, or even a few printed sheets, made their way west and sparked the idea. What we do have is a physical object: a 14th-century printed sheet in the Uyghur script, found in Turfan, in what is now Xinjiang. It's a Buddhist charm, printed from a woodblock, and it dates to exactly the period when Tamerlane's world was connected to that region. Luna: So the technology was there, in the neighborhood, but it just didn't take root in the Timurid heartland. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the frustrating thing about history — so much is lost. The Zafarnama, the official biography of Tamerlane written by Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi, doesn't mention printing at all. Ibn Arabshah's hostile account does, but he's not exactly reliable. We have to piece it together from archaeology and indirect references. Still, the evidence is strong enough that some historians now argue that the first printing press in the Islamic world was set up in Samarkand, around 1400, more than half a century before Gutenberg. Luna: And nobody knows about it. That's wild. Lucas: It really is. And it ties into something bigger: the way Tamerlane collected people and ideas as ruthlessly as he collected treasure. He wanted Samarkand to be the center of the world, and for a few decades, it was. If the printing press had taken off there, the whole history of Central Asia — and maybe the world — would be different. Luna: Speaking of keeping things going — a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps shows like this alive. If you've gotten something out of our conversations about Central Asia, you can help at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a real difference for us. Even a coffee's worth helps keep the research going and the episodes coming. And we really appreciate it. Luna: Alright — back to those lost printers. Lucas, you mentioned that the printed sheets from Turfan were Buddhist. Did Tamerlane's own religious views affect how printing was received? Lucas: Interesting point. Tamerlane was a devout Muslim, but he was also pragmatic. He used religion to legitimize his rule, but he wasn't a zealot in the sense of rejecting all foreign ideas. He patronized Sufi saints and built mosques, but he also employed Chinese astronomers and Persian poets. Printing might have been seen as a useful tool, not a threat — at least for secular purposes. The problem was that after his death, his son Shah Rukh and grandson Ulugh Beg were more conservative, and the printing experiment probably faded. Luna: So the captive printers were just one more group of artisans who built Tamerlane's dream, and then their craft vanished with them. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the tragic pattern: Tamerlane brought the best minds and hands to Samarkand, but the knowledge was often locked in those individuals. When they died, their skills died with them — unless they'd trained others. In the case of printing, we don't have evidence of a school or workshop that continued after the first generation. So the press, if it existed, was a flash in the pan. Luna: Are there any physical objects from Samarkand that we can point to and say 'this was printed there'? Lucas: Nothing definitive. There are rumors of a block-printed Quran from the Timurid period, but no surviving example has been authenticated. Most of what we have are later, from the Safavid or Mughal periods. The best candidate is a set of printed talismans from the 15th century, kept in the Topkapi Palace library in Istanbul. They're in Arabic and Persian, and they're stylistically consistent with Timurid decorative arts. But they could have been made anywhere from Herat to Tabriz. Luna: So it's a puzzle that may never be solved. Lucas: Partly. But the clues are enough to make us rethink the conventional story that printing moved from China to Europe with a long pause in the Islamic world. The Timurids might have been that pause — or they might have been the missing link. Either way, it's a reminder that history is full of technologies that almost changed everything, but didn't, for reasons that are often arbitrary. Luna: Thanks, Lucas. That was a great deep dive into a really obscure piece of history. Lucas: My pleasure. Next time, we'll look at another captive group: the Uyghur scribes who helped Tamerlane administer his empire. Until then.