The story of the paper

It is truly a great honor that Ahmed Al-Adawi translated my book "The Story of Paper Before the Appearance of Printing" - published in 2001 - into Arabic. I am also happy that "Dar Adab" published this Arabic translation, in this wonderful appearance, and elegant attire. We often repeat - in these days - that we live in a society overshadowed by globalization, where some information about the world moves in a fraction of a second; but it is often very difficult to access certain types of information, especially those stored in the depths of traditional printed books on paper. Perhaps the difficulty in accessing that type of information was represented in the rarity of foreign books published in other countries in libraries or in local bookstores. Perhaps the audience of interested readers has never heard of these books, or maybe they have heard of them, but they could not access them. And even if they could access them, they might not be able to read them smoothly due to the difference in the language in which they were written. Although my book addressed the pivotal role that paper played in the development of civilization in the Islamic world - and how Muslims transferred knowledge of paper and its manufacture from East Asia to Western Europe in the Middle Ages - the general readers in the region studied hardly know it! Despite the publication of a Turkish translation of the book in 2003. I hope that this Arabic translation will be widely available to the Arab readership, and known to them. And that it will inspire a new generation among them to appreciate the critical role played by Islamic societies in human civilization, when they used paper as a means of human communication. I was inspired to study this subject incidentally, in the last decade of the past century, when I wondered one day - as a historian of Islamic art and architecture - whether engineers and builders in the Islamic lands in the Middle Ages used architectural plans in designing their buildings. And assuming they used such architectural plans, what is the evidence of their existence? And what are the results that can be derived from proving this hypothesis? Thus, the answers to these simple questions first manifested in the form of articles, then those same answers led me to propose to Yale University Press to author a book on this topic. The idea indeed attracted the publisher's interest, but he initially suggested that I write a global history of paper, instead of focusing solely on the Islamic world. Accordingly, I prepared the manuscript of the book - reluctantly, due to the publisher's wish - and handed it over to him. But a member of the advisory board - whom I do not know - commented: it would be better if the author focused only on the Islamic world. So I rewrote the entire book, in the way I had planned from the beginning. And perhaps a harm is beneficial, as the final version of the book came out better, as a result of rewriting and restructuring it more than once. I was truly pleased to see that this book - published about 20 years ago - has inspired researchers in America and Europe to research and expand on some of the issues it raised. And I look forward to seeing how the readers of this Arabic translation will appreciate the forgotten role of "Paper Before the Appearance of Printing." The author / Jonathan Bloom