Latest / The Story of Uzbekistan: Silk Road Kingdoms and Soviet Legacy — Fexingo History / The Silk Road's Paper Revolution: How Samarkand Became a Papermaking Hub
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've spent a lot of episodes talking about the great cities and conquerors of this region — Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva. But today I want to zero in on something smaller and more humble that had an outsized impact on the entire Silk Road: paper. Luna: Paper? That's not what I expected. Lucas: I know, right? But think about it. Before paper, you're writing on papyrus or parchment. And parchment is made from animal skin — it's expensive, it's heavy, and it's not easy to mass-produce. Paper changed all of that. And Central Asia, specifically Samarkand, became one of the first places outside China to make it. Lucas: The story goes that the secret of papermaking came west after the Battle of Talas in 751 CE. That's where Arab forces clashed with the Tang dynasty near the Talas River in what is now Kyrgyzstan. The Arabs won, and according to tradition, they captured Chinese artisans who knew the craft. Those prisoners were taken to Samarkand, and that's where paper production started in the Islamic world. Luna: So a battle that's mostly forgotten today ended up changing the world more than anyone realized. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a great story, but historians are actually a bit skeptical. Some think papermaking might have arrived earlier, through trade. Sogdian merchants — those legendary middlemen of the Silk Road — were moving goods and ideas between China and Central Asia for centuries before the battle. It's possible they brought paper samples, or even the know-how, well before 751. Lucas: What we know for sure is that by the ninth century, Samarkand was a major papermaking hub. The city had hundreds of workshops, especially along the Siob River, which provided the water power needed for beating the pulp. They used mulberry bark, hemp, and rags — the same kind of materials you'd find in early Chinese paper. Luna: And that paper was good enough to be exported? Lucas: Oh, it was prized. Samarkand paper was supposedly finer than anything the Chinese were making at the time. It was smooth, it was strong, and it didn't absorb ink the way papyrus did. The next caliph, Harun al-Rashid — you know, the guy from the Thousand and One Nights — he ordered that Samarkand paper be used in the government's official documents. Lucas: That's a big deal because it signals that paper had become a serious technology, not just a novelty. And it spread quickly. By the end of the eighth century, Baghdad had its own paper mills, and by the tenth century, you had them from Damascus to Cairo to Fez. But Samarkand was the birthplace, at least for the Islamic world. Luna: It's a bit of a stretch to say a few captured artisans changed the course of civilization. But they kind of did. Lucas: And that's where the legend and the reality get fuzzy. But regardless of how it arrived, paper allowed for something amazing: the translation movement. Under the Abbasids, especially Caliph al-Ma'mun in the ninth century, scholars in Baghdad were translating Greek philosophy, Persian literature, and Indian mathematics into Arabic. And they needed a cheap, durable medium to do it on. Papyrus was fragile and came from Egypt; parchment was too expensive. Paper was the answer. Lucas: So you have this explosion of knowledge, and Central Asia is right in the middle of it. Think of people like al-Khwarizmi, the mathematician who basically gets credit for algebra. He was born in Khiva and spent his career in Baghdad. Or al-Farabi, the philosopher from Otrar. They all relied on paper to write their works and to read the works of others. Luna: So the libraries that we talked about in Bukhara — they wouldn't have been possible without this paper revolution. Lucas: Exactly. And here's a little irony — the Samanids, who ruled Bukhara in the tenth century, were a Persian dynasty that eagerly adopted Arabic learning. They built libraries that were legendary. The philosopher Avicenna — or Ibn Sina, as he's known here — he got his start reading in those libraries. He once said he read a book by al-Farabi forty times just to understand it. That's a lot of paper. Luna: He must have had a lot of paper in that library. Lucas: And speaking of reading, I want to take a quick side step here. You know, we're able to have these conversations because of the support of listeners like you. If you've gotten something out of this show — maybe you've learned something about the Silk Road or just enjoyed a good story — a couple of dollars a month goes a long way. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if that's something you feel like doing. It genuinely keeps these episodes coming. No pressure though. Luna: Yeah, it really does help us keep the lights on. And it keeps everything ad-free, which I love. Lucas: So back to paper. The Samanids weren't the only ones who appreciated it. When the Karakhanids, a Turkic dynasty, took over Transoxiana in the eleventh century, they kept the paper industry going. And then came the Mongols. Luna: I know this is the part where everything gets destroyed. Lucas: Usually, yes. But here's the twist: when Chinggis Khan's armies sacked Bukhara and Samarkand in 1220, they killed a lot of people, but they also spared the skilled craftsmen — including papermakers. And the Mongols, being pragmatic, realized the value of paper. They used it for their own administration, and they even took papermakers back to China with them. So the Mongols actually helped spread paper even further. Lucas: And there's evidence that after the Mongol conquest, paper production in Central Asia actually increased. Because the Mongols established trade routes from China to Persia, and paper was one of the goods that moved along them. So even in the aftermath of destruction, the craft survived and even thrived. Luna: So the Mongols, who we usually talk about as bringing the end of the Islamic Golden Age, ended up helping preserve one of its key technologies. Lucas: Right. And that's not to downplay the devastation, just to show that history is complicated. Later, under the Timurids, paper remained essential. Ulugh Beg's observatory in Samarkand — we talked about that in another episode — his astronomers needed paper to record their observations. And the star charts they made, the Zij-i Sultani, that was a huge document that wouldn't have been possible without a stable supply of paper. Luna: So paper is almost like the unsung hero of the Islamic Golden Age. Lucas: That's a nice way to put it. And I think it's worth remembering that something as simple as a writing surface can shape the course of intellectual history. If you're writing on something expensive, you're less likely to take risks with new ideas. Paper made experimentation cheap. And that's exactly what you need for science, philosophy, and literature. Lucas: And here's a final thought for you. The word for paper in many languages — 'papel' in Spanish, 'papier' in French, even the English 'paper' — all come from the Greek 'papyrus'. But the word for it in Arabic and Persian is 'kaghad', which comes from Sogdian. And the Sogdians were the very merchants I mentioned at the beginning. So even the name carries the memory of those Central Asian traders. Luna: That's a great bit of language history. So, next time I write on a piece of paper, I'll think of Samarkand. Lucas: Exactly. And maybe you'll appreciate how far that piece of paper has traveled. From a mulberry tree in a garden on the Siob River to your desk. It's a journey of a thousand years.