Revolution by the Ream: How Paper Came to the Islamic Lands and the West

• Event Date: Tuesday, April 26, 2005
• Time: 7:30 pm (CDT)
• Location: Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

Lecture by Jonathan Bloom
Professor of Islamic and Asian Art
Boston College

Paper was invented in China in the centuries before Christ. In the following centuries paper and papermaking was spread by Buddhist missionaries throughout east and central Asia, where Muslims encountered it when they conquered the region in the late 7th century CE. Muslims quickly adopted the new medium, which transformed Islamic society of the middle ages, ushering in intellectual, commercial, and artistic revolutions whose effects are still felt today. Eventually Muslims brought papermaking to Italy and Spain, where European Christians not only learned to make it themselves, but eventually made it cheaper. Under the pressure of European exports, however, papermaking in the Islamic lands eventually withered, and the role of the Muslim world in its transmission from China to Europe was entirely forgotten, so that when Europeans first discovered that the Chinese also made paper, they thought that they must have learned to do so from the ancient Egyptians!

This event is held in conjunction with the Focus Gallery exhibit Following the Paper Trail from China to the World, co-sponsored by the Spurlock Museum, the UI Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies, and a gift in memoriam of Dr. Yuen Tze Lo by his wife Sarah de Mundo Lo. The exhibit is part of the University of Illinois' Year of Asia celebration.