Printing · a Light

Arabic was block printed centuries before Gutenberg, on amulets

About sixty printed Arabic texts survive from medieval Egypt and Syria, most of them dug up at Fustat, the old settlement under Cairo. They are narrow strips of paper carrying Qur'anic verses, the names of God and prayers for protection, printed from carved blocks between roughly the tenth and fourteenth centuries and rolled into metal amulet cases. So the technology of printing on paper existed and was practised in Arabic before it existed in Europe. It stayed confined to amulets sold by street sellers, a trade of low standing, and never moved to books. Historians give various reasons, from the prestige of the copyist's hand to the economics of a strong manuscript trade, and none of them is settled.

Fustat, Egypt · c. 10th to 14th centuries