MATERIALS USED FOR PAPER. 139 



While some doubts have been entertained as to 

 whom Europe is directly indebted for the introduc- 

 tion of so important a manufacture, it is quite certain 

 that at a period anterior to the thirteenth century it 

 was known and practised in Asia. 



We have numerous and incontestible proofs that 

 the Chinese possessed the art of paper-making at 

 a very early period; from them their neighbours 

 the Tartars received it, substituting cotton, which 

 abounded in their country, for the bamboo, which 

 was certainly the substance more generally used in 

 China. At the commencement of the eighth century, 

 when the conquests of the Arabs carried them to 

 Samarkand, deep in the Scythian plains, they found 

 the manufacture of cotton paper established there. 

 The Arabs learned the art from the Tartars, as the 

 Tartars had learned it from the Chinese, and in their 

 turn substituted linen for cotton. To the Arabs there- 

 fore it appears pretty certain that we are indebted 

 for the inestimable article, or paper made from linen ; 

 but whether the art of making it was introduced by 

 the Italians of Venice, Gaeta, and Amalfi, who, 

 during the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries kept 

 up a constant commercial intercourse with Syria and 

 Egypt, or whether the Saracens (Arabs under 

 another name), who conquered Spain in the early 

 part of the eighth century, made known the manu- 

 facture in that country, has not as yet been clearly 

 ascertained. Mr. Mills reasonably supposes that the 

 flourishing linen manufactories at Valentia suggested 

 the idea of the substitution of linen for cotton in that 

 part of Europe, as the cotton manufactories at Sa- 

 markand induced the Tartars to employ cotton in- 

 stead of bamboo, &c. * 



England was among the last European countries 



* Andresi Storia generale delle Scienze ; Hallam's Hist, of 

 the Middle Ages ; Mills's Hist, of Mohammedanism* 



