Medieval tricksters secretly printed amulets and sold them as handwritten
Between roughly 900 and 1444, street magicians across the Islamic world known as the Banū Sāsān printed amulets bearing Quranic verses from wooden and tin blocks. They kept the method secret so illiterate buyers would believe each charm was written by hand. Some carry text just a millimetre high.
Printing began in China. Ink rubbings taken from inscribed stone appear in the mid-sixth century, and pressing inked wooden blocks onto paper followed later that century, becoming routine under the Tang dynasty. Japan's Nara court printed a million-scale run of Buddhist charms, the Hyakumantō Darani, around 770 and sent them to temples. A Korean sutra sealed in a pagoda repaired in 751 and found in 1966 was probably printed no later than 704. The Diamond Sutra of 868, recovered at Dunhuang, is the oldest complete printed book to survive.
Output grew enormous. By the tenth century some sutras ran to 400,000 copies, the Confucian classics were in print, and a skilled printer could pull up to 2,000 double-page sheets a day. Around 1040 Bi Sheng devised movable type from baked clay, which broke easily; by 1298 Wang Zhen had carved sturdier wooden characters and arranged them on revolving tables. Even so, woodblocks stayed cheaper for a script with thousands of characters.
Block printing spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Turpan, Persia and Russia. In the Islamic world it also served governments, stamping Fatimid tax receipts, Almohad decrees and Ilkhanid paper money. Its use in tenth-century Muslim Spain is the earliest block printing in Europe. Then, after 1436 or 1444, it vanished from Islamic lands without explanation, though Romani migrants reaching Central Europe early in the 15th century may have carried the skill.
Europeans first block-printed cloth, common by 1300. Once paper became easy to get around 1400, printers turned to small religious woodcuts and playing cards, produced in huge numbers from about 1425. Block-books, with text and pictures carved together, became mid-century bestsellers such as the Ars moriendi, a guide to dying well, though scholars still argue whether they came before or after movable metal type.
Source: Printing
