Papermaking technology, long established in China, spread westward into the Islamic world by the mid-8th century, with paper mills established in Baghdad under Abbasid patronage. Paper proved cheaper and more practical than parchment or papyrus, and its use spread through the Islamic world to Egypt, North Africa, and eventually Al-Andalus in Spain, from where it reached Christian Europe. Trans-Saharan trade networks later carried paper and manuscript culture southward, contributing to Timbuktu's growth as a center of Islamic scholarship and manuscript production in West Africa. The gradual diffusion of paper and associated bookmaking techniques transformed record-keeping, administration, and the circulation of commercial and scholarly knowledge across Afro-Eurasia.
Relevance to Trade History
The spread of paper along trade routes lowered the cost of recordkeeping and knowledge transmission, supporting the growth of commercial documentation and scholarship from Baghdad to Timbuktu to Europe.
Read the full story in our article The Trans-Saharan Trade Routes.
Source: British Library. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.