---
title: "History of printing"
chunk: 5/16
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_printing"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:12.806227+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Central Asia and Iran ===
Printing started appearing further west after its invention in China. The Uyghurs used wooden movable type by the 12th-13th centuries. In 1908, more than a thousand pieces of Uyghur type made of wood, engraved in Sogdian script, were discovered in Dunhuang. To date no manuscripts or fragments using Uyghur movable type have been identified, but traces of ink on the movable type have been found, confirming their use. The Uyghurs also made use of woodblock printing by the 14th century. Printed texts discovered in Turfan dating to around 1300 contained multiple languages such as Sogdian, Sanskrit, Uyghur, and Chinese. Some of them had titles and page numbers in Chinese which suggests that they were produced by Chinese craftsmen. Fragments of Buddhist texts were printed in both Uyghur and Chinese while bearing a red Chinese seal. A Mongolian calendar dated to 1324 with printed Uyghur text was discovered in Turfan.
It is speculated that printing was spread further west by Uyghurs under the Mongol Empire. A large number of Uyghurs were recruited by the Mongol army and Uyghur culture played an important role in the empire. After the Mongols incorporated Persia under their dominion, woodblock printing was used there for paper money, which was based on the exact same model as Chinese paper money. Even the Chinese name for it (chao) was adopted by the Persians. Paper money was printed in Tabriz in 1294 to alleviate the shortage of coinage but the markets refused to accept the new currency and the khan was forced to abandon it. Between 1301 and 1311, Rashid al-Din Hamadani, the prime minister of Ghazan, wrote the Jami' al-tawarikh, which described the process of Chinese woodblock printing. Abu Sulayman Banakati repeated the same description in another work dated 1317. A print was discovered in an excavation at the port of El Qoseir where Chinese wares were also discovered.

=== Egypt ===
Some fifty pieces of medieval Arabic blockprinting known as tarsh have been found in Egypt, printed in black ink on paper between 900 and 1300. These fragments are all religious in nature, used for amulets and prayers, and in Arabic script with the exception of one which contains a transliteration in the Coptic script on the border. It is disputed whether or not these printed fragments originated from Chinese printing. According to some historians such as Thomas Frances Carter, J. Karabacek, Adolf Grohmann, and Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, they are likely connected to printing in Central Asia and China. Their appearance suggests that they were printed using the same brush and pad process used by the Chinese rather than by pressure. Carter compares their religious nature in similarity to the early Buddhist prints of China. The theory of Chinese origin for these fragments is disputed by Richard W. Bulliet. According to Bulliet, some of the Arabic prints are too rough to have been based on the same method used by the Chinese. Instead, he proposed that they were printed using metal plates, possibly tin or lead, made with a clay mold. They also did not have a major impact the same way that other known Chinese products such as Tang pottery did. Thousands of imitation pieces of Tang pottery were created in the Middle East because of how rare and valuable genuine Tang pieces were. The Arabic print fragments evidently did not share the same prestige or quality as Chinese prints and were likely circulated among lower class society.

=== Europe ===