SYED SIDDIQ-E-AKBAR analyses the factors contributing to the political rise and fall of Muslim Ummah.
There was an insignificant battle between Muslims and the Chinese that took place in 134 AH during the early Abbasid period which was ruled by Khalifah Abu al- Abbas Al-Saffah. This battle was very insignificant politically and is hardly mentioned in the books of that time. However, this battle known as the Battle of Talas significantly changed the course of humanity afterwards. This battle took place in the present day region bordering Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
In this battle the Muslim army conquered a small area of the Tang dynasty ruled territory. They also took a few prisoners of war. Here the Muslim army came to know that two of the prisoners were from a secret guild who knew the art of making paper. This secret guild of paper manufacturing existed for more than three hundred years; however the paper they used to produce was used to make artefacts. The Muslim army had seen paper but now they had two of the prisoners who knew how to make it.
Judging the seriousness of this guild’s secret activity, the Muslim general sent the two prisoners to Baghdad, the headquarters of Khilafah at that time along with armed guards. The Khalifah saw the paper and told the prisoners they would be let free to go back to their homeland provided they taught the Muslims the art of making paper. The prisoners accepted this offer and taught the Muslims the art of making paper for the first time in Samarkand.
Here we need to understand very clearly the Khalifah and the Muslims as a whole during that time were willing to acquire knowledge from non-Muslims. This position of accepting knowledge from non-Muslims was first implemented by the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be to him) after the Battle of Badr, wherein the prisoners of war were told they would be set free if each of them educated 10 Muslim children to read and write.
Till this time Papyrus was being used for manuscripts but its basic problem was it used to erode away over a period of time. We hardly have remains of ancient manuscripts but a few fragments from Seerah Ibn Hisham and few others have been preserved in French and British museums.
With the advent of paper, all this was about to change. During the reign of second Abbasid Khalifah Al Mansoor (137 AH-159 AH) he decreed entire bureaucracy change the registers from papyrus to paper. Entire records of Government transactions and business dealings were written on paper. By 153 AH or so all government activity of tax collections and other businesses were written on paper throughout the Muslim lands.
Now in order to meet the growing demand for paper Muslims, who already had set up the first paper manufacturing unit in Samarkand, set up a second unit in Baghdad. These were the first paper manufacturing units set up outside China at that time. It is also told the fifth Abbasid Khalifah Haroon Al Rashid was instrumental in popularising the use of paper which in those days was called Kaqad in Persian and this was derived from the Chinese word Kagaz. It is also mentioned that this was the Golden Era of the Abbasid Khilafah.
By this time the Muslims had understood the significance of using paper and this was used to revolutionise knowledge completely and one of the persons who pointed this out a few centuries later was Tunisian born Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) who is considered to be among the first Muslim social historians to analyse the rise and fall of nations from a social perspective. He writes that after introduction of paper in Government activity and subsequent use of paper for scholarly writing the paper manufactured was much better in quality and excellence. Ibn Khaldun is considered to be the father of Sociology in the Western world.
Paper was an engine for social change, intellectual change and its very presence signified literacy and education, and education signified productivity, intellectual genius, Islamic scholarship, scientific enquiry and much more. Thus when Muslims embraced paper the Islamic revolution of thoughts and ideas sparked off aiding its activity in Islamic scholarship, writing books, translating books of the ancient Greece and thus began the initial Islamic Renaissance.
As time progressed Muslims improved the technology of paper manufacturing and different types of paper was available under different brands. A few of the brands available were Jafri paper, Suleimani paper, Ahmadi paper, Noorani paper, etc.
Another important development was stacking of paper to form bundles which in those days were called Reasma and this word was slightly altered and today this is called a ream of paper. By stacking paper in bundles and binding this from the sides created books. This signified the modern notion of books developed by the Muslims of that time.
It was during this time the Islamic civilization reached its pinnacle in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Arithmetic, Algebra, Biology, Astronomy, etc. The medium of paper used in the Muslim lands had a lot to do with this.
The Western world during the 8th and 9th centuries was still in dark ages and did not know what paper was. Eventually they were introduced to paper in the year 489 AH when the first unprovoked massacre of over half a million men, women and children was carried out during the infamous crusades led by the Europeans on the Muslim lands. This perhaps was also the first interaction of Europeans with Muslims. It was here for the first time did the Europeans understand and could see the Muslims having scientific learning and using books. They carried a lot of material back to Europe but the art of making paper still eluded them.
Simultaneously, there were two Muslim lands which were recaptured by the Europeans. First was Andalusia (Spain) where the Europeans commenced recapture of territories from the year 479 AH. It was during these wars in the year 544 AH that the Europeans got hold of the first paper manufacturing facility in a place called Yetiva, now close to the modern city of Mursia. Every time the Europeans conquered cities in Andalusia, they used to massacre or drive out the entire population but kept the Muslim paper manufacturing technicians in safety till such time they were made to understand the art of making paper and subsequently were killed.
Another very important place the Europeans conquered and which had a profound effect in setting up paper manufacturing units across Europe was in an island called Sicily, now a part of Italy. Sicily had been under Muslim rule for about 200 years before being re-conquered in the year 540 AH by Roger the 1st. He was not only instrumental for bringing in a number of reforms in the medieval minds of the Europeans but also introduced paper got from Sicily.
Italians having acquired technology of paper making from the Muslims introduced Hydro power to beat pulp and process that into much finer grade. This complete new process of manufacture aided them in producing thinner, durable and superior quality paper. By using intellect what Allah the Exalted had given to them, the Italians not only introduced better paper but for the first time used watermarking in the 13th century. Paper production, a monopoly of Muslim manufacturers, ceased to be so. By the end of the 14th century, paper was exported to Muslim lands. During this century more and more Islamic literature was written on paper got from Europe. The earliest copy of the Qur’ān written on Italian manufactured paper was during this time but the most disheartening thing is the watermark on the paper which is a cross of the Roman Catholic Christian world. By the 16th century onwards, most of the paper mills in the Muslim world closed down unable to match the European suppliers in quality and price.
Johannes Gutenberg in the year 1439 along with his partners Andreas Dritzen and Andreas Heilmann who was a paper manufacturer invented a printing press which is categorised as one of the biggest inventions of mankind. Gutenberg’s idea of mass producing of printed books and literature succeeded. By early 16th century Europe had 300 printing presses engaged in mass printing. By the end of the century, they had printed and distributed twenty million copies of books in various languages. The Europeans, a little more than a century ago, had been in dark ages and now with paper and the printing press they made great advances in the field of education and science and thus the making of modern Europe. Christopher Columbus set foot on American continent and established printing presses in Mexico and at many other places.
Now the political dominance of the Muslim Ummah finally came to an end. It was just twenty years after Gutenberg had invented the printing press, the Ottoman Khilafah banned its use in Muslim lands. In the year 1485 the Ottoman Khalifa Sultan Bayazid II declared the printing press to be Haraam. Import of printing press, printed books and literature from Europe was also banned by a royal decree. In the year 1515 Khalifah Sultan Selim I persuaded by influential Ulema of the realm, issued a decree stating anyone caught with a printing press in Ottoman lands will be executed. This ban remained for the next 290 years except for an attempt to circumvent the ban in 1729.
There were Ulema petitioning for the printing press in Ottoman lands. In the year 1729, a convert from Hungary, Ibrahim Mutafarikka, who had risen to becoming a Minister in the Ottoman Empire, wrote a book Wasilat tat Tibaa about the printing press and gave it to the Grand Mufti and argued the case for it. The Grand Mufti agreed but with three conditions: 1) Nothing in Arabic 2) Nothing to do with Islam 3) Only government approved books. It was 290 years after the printing press invention, secular books in the Turkish language (still not in Arabic and not about Islam) were allowed to be introduced to the Muslim lands. Thus it was only after 1784 that the printing technology could filter to the rest of Middle East. Even so it was not till 1817 (378 years after the invention of printing) that the first books were printed in Iran.
The ban on the printing press was not the only ban to reckon with. There were other bans, taboos and restrictions which, compounded by sheer lack of curiosity, placed the Ottoman Empire in a self-imposed intellectual quarantine. It worked in devious ways. An astronomical observatory, the best in Asia, was demolished in 1580, not long after its construction, at the insistence of the then Shaikh-ul-Islam who argued that prying into the secrets of the heavens was blasphemous. Import of European wares was permissible, but export forbidden. European ideas and innovations (except those connected with warfare) were discouraged.
Another important event took place in the year 1492 – the fall of Garnata in Andalusia (Spain). With the influx of Jews in the Muslim lands, they petitioned the Khalifah to allow them use the printing press. The Jews and the Christians were allowed to do so but the printing was to be done only in their languages and not in Turkish or in Arabic and the printed material shall not be shared with Muslims. By this the Jews and Christians became more literate and highly educated than the Muslims, who were deprived of education and scientific knowledge and became more backward in literacy in their own lands. Thus the Jews and Christians started occupying important bureaucratic posts in the Ottoman Empire.
Finall, the French under Napoleon Bonaparte attacked Egypt in the year 1798. This attack by the French started the era of colonialism. When the French invaded Egypt, they brought a printing press and set it up over there. The French rule did not last long. Subsequently in 1822 Mohammed Ali Basher established a Government printing press at Bulaq on the outskirts of Cairo known as the Al Amiriya press and carried the modernisation of Egypt. Egyptians became pioneers in the Muslim world and the use of printing press had a lot to do with this. The Egyptian Islamic scholars did not stay behind but in 1870 established the first Islamic printing press. Now the Muslim world got their first most authentic and most scholarly Islamic books from this press. Finally printing presses were established in Cairo, Baghdad and other places in the Muslim lands.
It took about 383 years for the Muslim world to get an Arabic printing press. By this time most of the Muslim lands were colonised or were in the process of getting colonised and their European masters wreaked havoc on the Muslim Psyche the world over. Subsequently, the World War I started and the Turkish Empire ceased to exist. Khilafah was abolished by the rogue Turkish ruler Mustapha Kemal Pasha. Muslim lands were torn into bits and pieces. Next was the World War II after which major part of Palestine was gifted to the Jews and Muslim India was torn apart. By this time the entire Central Asian Muslim lands were annexed by the Soviets.
A very important point to be made is that had the Khalifas and the Muslim scholars who had with them the knowledge of the Qur’ān and the Sunnah acted judiciously and adopted scientific knowledge and new technologies such as the printing press and incorporated that into their system, perhaps the history may have been different. With the use of paper and printing press came knowledge and with knowledge power.