It is somewhat the "irony of fate" that no account of the origin of paper has been reliably recorded. Much of the reputed history of the art, or the invention, is only conjectural. The fact is that, however remote the time and place of its beginning, paper first became available to the world of letters in the eighth century. The Arabs, having acquired the art of making it from China (through Chinese prisoners, it is said) brought its manufacture into Arabia in the eighth century and, later, carried it into Europe by way of northern Africa. The comparatively large number of Arab manuscripts, preserved from the ninth century, is evidence of the extent to which paper was adopted and used for their literary, scientific, and religious records.
The Moors by their conquest of Spain in the eighth century brought their civilization and its benefits into western Europe and, at a later time--at about the twelfth century--introduced the manufacture of paper therein. The industry spread, later, from Spain into Italy and Sicily, and came eventually into the hands of the Christians, under whose less skillful manipulations it suffered deterioration in quality. At a still later date, its manufacture extended into southern and western Germany and into the Netherlands, England, and France.
_Cotton_ paper was first manufactured from the natural product; but later, as the industry was extended to regions where cotton was not grown and into which it was not imported, other substances were used instead of the raw cotton. "In Spain," it is said, "flax was the first material used, then cotton." The practice of mixing rags--first woolen, then cotton, and later linen--gradually came into use. Near the close of the eleventh century (1085) is designated as the date when rags were first used for paper in Spain; linen paper appeared in 1100. "From the time rags began to be used in Europe they rapidly displaced other materials on account of the double use of the fibre composing them (used first for clothing or domestic purposes). Rags held sway in the paper industry for many centuries, but not entirely to the exclusion of numerous other materials."[31]
_Linen_ paper, though known much earlier, came into general use in the fourteenth century. It was manufactured not only in response to the demand for improvement which characterizes all inventions but because linen was then less expensive than cotton. The earliest existing document on paper is a deed of King Roger of Sicily, 1102 A. D. There are other documentary records of Sicilian kings during the twelfth century. "The manufacture of paper from linen rags," says Thalheimer, "was a humble but essential antecedent to the art of printing, for the costliness of parchment or vellum was as effectual a barrier to the multiplication of books as the labor of transcribing them." Even before the Christian Era, the cost of books was largely the cost of the material--papyrus--upon which they were mostly written. Mr. Putnam suggests that "if printing had come into Europe in the first century, the world might to-day be buried under the accumulated mass of its literature"--no, not unless the invention of paper had been coterminous or had preceded.