Traditional papermakers kept the last name of Kagzi, after kaghaz, the Persian word for paper. Working in the field among Indian and central Asian papermakers during the last 27 years, I came to understand that papermaking skills and know-how were tightly held within Muslim families until modern times. For India, that change came after the British forced jailhouse inmates to make paper and the Gandhian movement advocated the value of handcraft for all. The key to unraveling the story of Islamic paper, from my perspective with a background in anthropology, seemed deceptively simple: follow kagzi families who moved in an unbroken lineage stretching from Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, and Persia down to cities like Lahore and Sialkot (now Pakistan) and into the great cities of India alongside the Mughals whose love of art, calligraphy, and poetry is legendary. This is not to ignore another distinct route that papermaking took through the very northernmost Himalayan areas, now part of India. Made by Buddhist artisans, these papers were produced mostly from plant fibers (compared to the rags often used by the Muslim papermakers). Perhaps Sogdians quietly made paper in Samarkand in the days before Tha'alibi who, in the eleventh century, recounted that, "It was Ziyad, son of Salih, who took these prisoners, among whom were found the papermakers. Then the manufacture grew and not only filled the local demand but also became for the people of Samarkand an important article of commerce. Thus it came to minister to the needs and well-being of mankind in all the countries of the earth." Whatever the origins, it is unquestionable that Samarkand was a great center of Muslim papermaking. Babur, the Mughal conqueror, brutal fighter, lover of art and poetry, who still found time to pen his memoirs, says of the stronghold he finally conquered, "Samarkand is a wonderful city…The best paper in the world comes from Samarkand. The species of paper called zuaz comes entirely from Kanegil, which is situated on the banks of the Water of Mercy." 2 And later in the same text he recounts, "every day I rode out to visit some new place that I had not seen before…I saw the bleaching ground, the Garden of Ali Shir, the paper mills…."3 An Indian family I have worked with for over a decade introduced me to a bahat mirasi, an individual who inherited the responsibility of keeping generations of family history records. She produced a rugged, crumbling book wrapped in leather that traced my kagzi friend's family, now in Sanganer, village to village, up the heart of India, generation after generation, back to Samarkand. I interviewed numerous Muslim papermaking families who shared details of similar migration paths. Through oral tradition they often possessed date-specific details of their ancestor's movements, including for example, migrations to work on behalf of Mughal leaders or exoduses due to droughts or rivers drying up. I interviewed elder papermakers in the Fergana valley of Uzbekistan, where ruins of wooden stampers can still be found, and they too talked about members of their extended families moving south with the Mughals. Papermaking ruins still dot the Indian landscape in the path of the Mughal migrations especially in locations near great centers of art and culture. It was exhilarating when I first found pit vats for sheetmaking and fermenting pits (kundas) that resembled those in China, along with stamper (dhenki) holes and huge bleaching platforms (chabutras) in places like Daulatabd, Erandol, Gosundra, Junnar, Kalpi, Khuldabad–Kagzipura, Kishangarh, Sawai Madhopur, and Zafarabad. Elder kagzis told me their stories, shared their laments over the loss of the craft's flourishing days, showed me their tools and techniques, sometimes the secret ones, and were always moved by my interest and care. Among my favorite insights: - Stories and demonstrations that explained how to make a "strong, fine" paper called do pani kagaz or double-dip paper. The sheetmaker would dip once to deposit a thin, even layer of fiber on a grass mould, and then dip a second time to create a super strong sheet. Artisans told me they could make 500 sheets a day and layer the sheets one on top of another without interleaving felts. "Those were the masters!" exclaimed the elder papermakers. One artisan showed me how tapping a water jug on top of the pulp solution created waves to arrange the fibers in order to create strong sheets. - I marveled at the detail of the finest grass chapri moulds made from hollow and buoyant swamp reeds with a finer reed inserted at all the joins to create strength and stability. Woven and suspended from a wooden frame, reeds are held together with vertical knotting. In the past horsehair was used, today cord or even monofilament is used. - My hands have held many beautiful polishing stones, from agates to ivory rollers, used to hand burnish paper to seal the surface and create a smooth, luminous surface, perfect for calligraphy and miniature painting. - In Lahore I met Hajji Muhammad Bashir, a bookbinder who repaired old Qur'ans without charge. He introduced me to hiran ke chelli, the mysterious, transparent, interleaving sheets made from a membrane found between the skin and flesh of a deer. These tissue-like, clear sheets were used to prevent the offsetting of pigment from a heavily illustrated page onto the facing page. Later I learned the process from a Delhi resident, saw additional samples, and learned that thin, translucent "paper" had also been made from the inner membrane of a snake, called hiran ke nag. - At the old sites I was fascinated by the below-earth pits that artisans stood in while lifting sheets from another pit in front of them. Perhaps this arrangement created a less backbreaking lift; or it kept the sheetmaker and the pulp cooler; or it was the easiest way to create a plaster-lined vat that could hold a lot of water and not leak. In some locations the sheetmaker sat cross-legged parallel to the sunken vat, bending at the waist to create sheets by dipping a mould into the vat. - In Sanganer the wife of Mohammad Hussain Kagzi brushed sheets onto a polished plaster wall to dry, the way it had been done for centuries. This traditional way of sheet drying has all but vanished; now sheets are generally couched onto cloth and hung to line dry under India's blistering sun. Today India may well have the largest population of hand papermakers in the world. Once supported by the country's artistic longings and later by Gandhian and government organizations, now the papermakers face the challenge of a free market, world trade, and a diminishing knowledge of the finer aspects of the craft. Throughout history India's papermaking tradition has been ignited, squelched, and resurrected by predictable and unpredictable circumstances. So what will inspire the next boom? Perhaps the great rise of India's middle class with disposable income or a renewed interest in heritage craft traditions will once again boost hand papermaking. Increased wealth and national pride might also inspire fine paper production for restoration of Mughal art and the creation of contemporary works of art on paper. It is an ever-moving pendulum. The author is seeking help in her efforts to digitize and make available her vast archive of over 20,000 images documenting papermaking, book, and related decorative art methods in India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Nepal. For information, please contact the author by email at Alexandra@worldpaperusa.com or by phone, 973-238-1750. Ed. ___________ notes 1. Thomas Francis Carter, The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward (New York: Ronald Press, 1925). 2. Babur, Memoirs of Babar, Emperor of India: First of the Great Moghals, translated by F. G. Talbot (London: Arthur L. Humphreys, 1909). 3. Ibid.

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