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medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025
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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: verlag@oeaw.ac.at |
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DATUM, UNTERSCHRIFT / DATE, SIGNATURE
BANK AUSTRIA CREDITANSTALT, WIEN (IBAN AT04 1100 0006 2280 0100, BIC BKAUATWW), DEUTSCHE BANK MÜNCHEN (IBAN DE16 7007 0024 0238 8270 00, BIC DEUTDEDBMUC)
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medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025, pp. 139-154, 2025/11/27
In the absence of documented information about papermaking during the early Islamic centuries, our knowledge of production methods, trade, types, and major centres remains fragmentary, limited to a few scattered references in primary sources. This article introduces a rare Persian treatise on the manufacture of cotton paper in the thirteenth century, entitled Kāghaẕ-nāma (»Book of Paper«), composed in a maqāma-like prosimetric style. It is the earliest known work on papermaking in Persian, dated 649 AH/1251 AD, and was written by ʿIzz al-Dīn Maṭlaʿī for a patron probably named Tāj al-Dīn in Khorasan. Although an edition of the text was published in Iran in 2013, it has never been examined in Western scholarship. This paper seeks to introduce the Kāghaẕ-nāma to a wider audience and to explore what it reveals about papermaking practices and the symbolic meanings attached to paper in Mongol Baghdad. After introducing the sole surviving manuscript (Istanbul, Ayasofya 4824), its author, and the dedicatee, I discuss the treatise’s allegorical and mystical dimensions, alongside its practical descriptions of papermaking. The evidence suggests that the author’s depiction of the process, though couched in metaphor, corresponds closely to the actual techniques used in thirteenth-century Islamic workshops.
Keywords: Kāghaẕ-nāma, ʿIzz al-Dīn Maṭlaʿī, Islamic papermaking, Mongol Baghdad