The Evolution of Paper and Its Invention During the Islamic Era

One of the most important manifestations of human culture and civilization is undoubtedly paper. The role which paper has played in human life, culture, and knowledge is very important. Learning sciences and acquiring knowledge was limited to a particular class of society before paper invention. The reason was high cost, low productivity and difficulties in transportation of writing materials before invention of paper which altogether made it impossible for different classes of society to come to different sciences. But later, the invention of paper made sciences more widespread. The acquaintance of Muslims with paper in the 2nd century AH was an important event in the expansion of Islamic culture and civilization. Questions such as: What materials were used to write before the invention of paper? where and by whom was paper invented for the first time? how did Muslims become familiar with, learn and expand paper? and of course, the main question that what stages paper invention did pass during the Islamic era? will be the obscurities addressed by current research. The research method in this paper is a descriptive-analytical one and the procedure for data collection is based on the librarian method.