ORIENTAL ELEMENTS OF CULTURE IN THE OCCIDENT. 527 



Arabic docuiiKMits at? Yirniiu arc i)artly printed black on white, partly 

 white on black; No. 0^0 is printed in red. In one case (No. U-il) tiiere 

 are Coptic characters in addition to the Aral)ic. Thev are without 

 anv vahie as regards their contents. A y)rinte(l ])iece of the Koran, 

 reproduced by Karabacek in the Fiihrer, page i^4s. shows that the 

 Mohammedans were not then pi-i'judiced in this respect. 



The historical continuity of printing can not be Droxcn with the 

 same certainty as that of the use; of paper. Still, to show that the 

 knowledge of printing on ])aper remained alive in tiie Orient, tiic fol- 

 lowing witnesses can b(> achhtced. According to Karabacek, who 

 refers to Abu Shama's Kitab ar-raudatain," tlie compulsory bank 

 notes, each of one dinar, issued in 1147 in north(M-n S_\ria, were pro- 

 duced 1)V plate })rinting. and in the i)aper money printing laireau 

 established in 12'.t;; A. D. at Tebriz the woi'k was carried on after 

 Chinese patterns.'' Furthermore, the Persian historian Kaslud-ed-din 

 (died 1318 A. D.) gives a description of the Chinese piocess of print- 

 ing.' We learn from this description the interesting fact that at that 

 time editions of a certain number of copies were not jjrinted, but the 

 i:)lates were kept unchu- lock in the libraries. Anyone who wished to 

 buy a book went thither and had an impression made. The cultural 

 value of the edition should not be underestimated. Thus, for instance, 

 the importance of book printing for the Reformation would have been 

 much impaired by the old Chinese process of nudtiplylng. 



As long as paper had to be imported into the Occident it could not 

 be cheap, because of limited means of communication in the ^liddlo 

 Ages. From Wattenbach'' we learn that in G(>i"many. at least, the use 

 of paper became more general only after the fourteenth century. 

 After paper production was established in the OccidiMit we ol)serve 

 here, as among the Chinese and the Arabs, that printing followed in 

 its train.' 



The step from printing from })lates to that with movable types was, 

 wnth our phonetic system of only two dozen signs, still less a feat of 

 genius than the invention of the printing process at large. In the 

 Wegweisser durch das Germanische Museum, Nuremb(M-g, 1I»01, page 

 147, the following passage occurs: ""In recent time some think they 



« Printed at Cairo 1287 A. H. = 1870-71 A. D. 



''Coinp. Karabacek, Neue P'ntdeckungen zur Ge^chichte <les I'apicns uml Dnicke.s: 

 Osterreichische Monatsschrift fiir den Orient, vol. 16, 1890, \^\). 169-170. 



'■Comp. M. J. Klaproth, Lettre a ^l. le Baron A. de Hnndjoldt sur rinvention de 

 la boufjsole, Paris, 1834, pj). l.';i-lo2. 



''Schriftwesen ini Mittelallcr, .'>d ed., ]>. 149. 



''Comj). T. O. Weigel nnd A. Ze.sterniaini, Die Anf:in<2;e dcr DriK'kerknnst, 2 vol- 

 umes, Leipzig, 1866; Katalog friihester l']rzengnisse dcr Dnickerkunf^t der T. (). 

 Weigel'schen Sainmlung, Leipzig, 1872; A. Essenwein, Alteste Drnckerzeugnisse ini 

 Germanischen Museum: Anzeiger fiir die Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, Nurendierg, 

 1872, columns 241-248; W. L. Schreiljer, Vorstufen der Typographic: Gutenberg- 

 Festschrift, Leipzig, 1900, p. .•!0 ff. 



