The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

406 ON THE ORIGIN AND MANUFACTURE OF
degrees to the manufacture of paper from linen only*. Wehrs
also endeavors to claim the honor of the invention for Germany,
his own country ; but Schonemann gives that distinction to
Italy, because there, in the district of Ancona, a considerable
manufacture of cotton paper was carried on before the fourteenth
centuryt. All however admit, that they have no satisfactory
evidence on the subject.
A clear light is throwai upon these questions by a remark of
the Ai-abian physician, AbdoUatiph, who visited Egypt A. D.
1200. He informs usj, " that the cloth found in the catacombs,
and lised to erwelope the mummies, was made into gai'Tnents,
or sold to the scribes to make jjaper for shop-keepers.'^
Having shown (See Part IV. Chapter I.) that this cloth was
linen, the passage of AbdoUatiph, therefore, may be considered
as a decisive proof, which, however, has never been produced
as such, of the manufacture of hnen paper as early as the
year 1200.
This account coincides remarkably with what we know from
various other sources. Professor Tychsen, in his learned and
curious dissertation on the use of paper from Papyrus (publish-
ed in the Cominentationes Reg. Soc. Gottingensis Recenti-
ores, vol. iv. A. D. 1820), has brought abundant testimonies to
prove that Egypt supplied all Eurojoe icith this kind of
paper until towards the end of the eleventh century. The
use of it was then abandoned, cotton paper being employed in-
stead. The Araljs in consequence of their conquests in
Bucharia had learnt the art of making cotton jjaper about the
year 704, and through them or the Saracens it was introduced
* Vom Papier, p. 183. t Diplomatik, vol . i. p. 494.
t Chapter iv. p. 188 of Silvestre de Sacy's French translation, p. 221 of Wahl's
German translation. This interesting passage was translated as follows by Ed-
ward Pococke, the younger :— " Et qui ex Arabibus, incolisve Rifte, aliisve, has
areas indagant, hiEC integumenta diripiunt, quodque in iis rapiendum iuvenitur ;
et conficiunt sibi vestes, aut ea chartariis vendunt ad conficiendam chartam em-
poreaticam."
Silvestre de Sacy (Notice, &.C.), animadverting on White's version which is
entirely different, expresses his approbation of Pococke's, from which Wahl's does
not materially differ.