• Walter POHL – Nina MIRNIG (Eds.) – Annamaria PAZIENZA – Irene BAVUSO (Guest Eds.)

medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025

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A truly sensational find is presented in volume 23 of Medieval Worlds: a newly discovered Christian world chronicle in Arabic, which Adrian C. Pirtea examines in a preliminary case study. We furthermore open a new series on Multilingualism in Premodern Societies, which investigates patterns of communication, mobility and power in connection with language use in a Eurasian context. This first instalment focuses on Urban Administrative Spaces (guest editor: Katalin Szende), in which two captivating articles make use of pragmatic literacy and investigate chancery documents of the 14th-17th centuries: Lena Sadovski uses them to draw out skilfully the multilingual environment of Venetian Dalmatia. Marijana Mišević highlights in her study the potential of this hitherto underused source for studying the communication between Ragusans and Ottomans. Our cluster on Moving Jobs: Occupational Identity and Motility in the Middle Ages (guest editors: Annamaria Pazienza and Irene Bavuso) is continued from volume 20 (2024) with three contributions investigating how mobility could have meaningful impact on social advancement and identity formation: Joe Glynias presents a new view on the renowned 11th-century Baghdadi physician Ibn Buṭlān and his career as Christian Arabic author. The movement of peasants in 10th-century Spain as reconstructed from charters serves for Robert Portass as model to develop ideas on the mobility of local communities. Irene Bavuso combines theories of mobility and sedentism to offer new perspectives on artisans in early medieval England. A rare source on papermaking in 13th-century Baghdad was transcribed and partially translated by Shiva Mihan for a further addition to our volume on Mongols’ Baghdad. Knowledge Transmission through Manuscript Cultures before and after the Conquest (guest editors: Bruno de Nicola and Nadine Löhr).

medieval worlds is open to submissions of broadly comparative studies and matters of global interest, whether in single articles, companion papers, smaller clusters, or special issues on a subject of global/comparative history. We particularly invite studies of wide-ranging connectivity or comparison between different world regions.

Apart from research articles, medieval worlds publishes ongoing debates and project and conference reports on comparative medieval research.

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medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025

ISSN 2412-3196
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ISBN 978-3-7001-5131-9
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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: bestellung.verlag@oeaw.ac.at
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The Kāghaẕ-nāma: Papermaking in 13th-Century Baghdad

    Shiva Mihan

medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025, pp. 139-154, 2025/11/27

doi: 10.1553/medievalworlds_no23_2025s139


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doi:10.1553/medievalworlds_no23_2025s139

Abstract

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