Diffusion of paper

Paper spread slowly outside of China; other East Asian cultures, even after seeing paper, could not make it themselves[citation needed]. Instruction in the manufacturing process was required, and the Chinese were reluctant to share their secrets. The paper was thin and translucent, not like modern western paper, and thus only written on one side. The technology was first transferred to Goguryeo in 604 and then imported to Japan by Buddhist priests, around 610, where fibres (called bast) from the mulberry tree were used.[citation needed]
Islamic world

After the defeat of the Chinese in the Battle of Talas in 751 (present day Kyrgyzstan), the invention spread to the Middle East.[7] The rudimentary and laborious process of paper making was refined and machinery was designed for bulk manufacturing of paper by Muslims. Production began in Baghdad, where the Arab Muslims invented a method to make a thicker sheet of paper, which helped transform papermaking from an art into a major industry.[8] The use of pulp mills, which are water-powered mills used for preparing the pulp material used in papermaking, dates back to Samarkand in the 8th century,[9] though this should not be confused with paper mills (see Paper mills section below). The Muslims also introduced the use of trip hammers (powered by humans and animals) in the production of paper, replacing the traditional Chinese mortar and pestle method. In turn, the trip hammer method was later employed by the Chinese.[10]

The Arabs also made advances in book production soon after they learnt papermaking from the Chinese in the 8th century.[11] Particular skills were developed for script writing (Arabic calligraphy), miniatures and bookbinding.

The Arabs made books lighter—sewn with silk and bound with leather-covered paste boards; they had a flap that wrapped the book up when not in use. As paper was less reactive to humidity, the heavy boards were not needed.

The production of books became a real industry and cities like Marrakech in Morocco had a street named "Kutubiyyin" or book sellers which contained more than 100 bookshops by the 12th century.[12] In the words of Don Baker: "The world of Islam has produced some of the most beautiful books ever created. [...] Splendid illumination was added with gold and vibrant colours, and the whole book contained and protected by beautiful bookbindings."[13]

The earliest recorded use of paper for packaging dates back to 1035, when a Persian traveler visiting markets in Cairo noted that vegetables, spices and hardware were wrapped in paper for the customers after they were sold.[14]

Since the First Crusade in 1096, paper manufacturing in Damascus had been interrupted by wars, splitting production into two centres. Egypt continued with the thicker paper, while Iran became the center of the thinner papers. Papermaking was diffused across the Islamic world, from where it was diffused further west into Europe.[15]
Americas

In America, archaeological evidence indicates that a similar bark-paper writing material was invented by the Mayans no later than the 5th century CE.[16] Called amatl, it was in widespread use among Mesoamerican cultures until the Spanish conquest. The parchment is created by boiling and pounding the inner bark of trees, until the material becomes suitable for art and writing.

These materials made from pounded reeds and bark are technically not true paper, which is made from pulp, rags, and fibers of plants and cellulose.
Europe
A copy of the Gutenberg Bible, in the U.S. Library of Congress

The oldest known paper document in the West is the Mozarab Missal of Silos from the 11th century, probably using paper made in the Islamic part of Spain. They used hemp and linen rags as a source of fibre.

Paper is recorded as being manufactured in both Italy and Germany by 1400, just about the time when the woodcut printmaking technique was transferred from fabric to paper in the old master print and popular prints. The first commercially successful paper mill in England was opened by John Spilman in 1588 near Dartford in Kent and was initially reliant on German papermaking expertise.[citation needed]
Paper mills
Main article: Paper mill
The Nuremberg paper mill, the building complex at the lower right corner, in 1493. Due to their noise and smell, papermills were required by medieval law to be erected outside of the city perimeter.

A paper mill is a water-powered mill that pounds the pulp by the use of trip-hammers. The mechanization of the pounding process was an important improvement in paper manufacture over the manual pounding with hand pestles.

Evidence for water-powered paper mills is elusive in both Chinese[17][18] and Muslim papermaking,[19] though there is evidence that they used human-powered and animal-powered paper mills.[20] The general absence of the use of water-power in Muslim papermaking is suggested by the habit of Muslim authors to call a production center a "paper manufactory", but not a "mill".[21]

Donald Hill has identified a possible reference to a water-powered paper mill in Samarkand, in the 11th-century work of the Persian scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni, but concludes that the passage is "too brief to enable us to say with certainty" that it refers to a water-powered paper mill.[22] While this is seen by Halevi nonetheless as evidence of Samarkand first harnessing waterpower in the production of paper, he concedes that it is not known if waterpower was applied to papermaking elsewhere across the Islamic world at the time;[23] Burns remains altogether sceptical given the isolated occurrence of the reference and the prevalence of manual labour in Islamic papermaking elsewhere.[24]

The earliest certain evidence to a water-powered paper mill dates to 1282 in the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon.[25] A decree by the Christian king Peter III addresses the establishment of a royal "molendinum", a proper hydraulic mill, in the paper manufacturing centre of Xàtiva.[25] The crown innovation appears to be resented by the local Muslim papermakering community; the document guarantees the Muslim subjects the right to continue their way of traditional papermaking by beating the pulp manually and grants them the right to be exempted from work in the new mill.[25]

The first paper mill north of the Alps was established in Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer in 1390; it is later depicted in the lavishly illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle.[26] From the mid-14th century onwards, European paper milling underwent a rapid improvement of many work processes.[27]