Tarsh

Block-printed Talismanic Circular Leaf 11th century

In post-classical Arabic, a ṭarsh (طرش) is an engraved block used for printing. They were made of wood or tin and were in use from around 900 to 1430. There are over a hundred known Arabic blockprints on paper, parchment and possibly papyrus. They are mostly small strips intended for use in amulets. They have mainly been identified in public and private collections, but a few prints have been recovered archaeologically at Fusṭāṭ in Egypt. No ṭarsh itself has yet been found.

History

Fatimid talismanic scroll, 11th century, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The six-pointed star is the seal of Solomon.

The origin of ṭarsh, whether borrowed along with paper from China or invented independently in the Islamic world, is disputed. Richard Bulliet, contrasting the rapid adoption of paper and the marginalization of printing in the Islamic world, suggests a separate origin for each and thus the indigenous development of ṭarsh. The origin of the word ṭarsh is uncertain. The Semitic root ṭ-r-š (طرش) is related to deafness and ṭ-r-s (طرس) to writing (including the word for palimpsest), but an Egyptian origin has also been suggested.

Between the 10th and 14th centuries, several texts contain passages which could refer to block printing. Perhaps the earliest of these is Ibn al-Nadim's Fihrist of the late 10th century, where he mentions Egyptian magicians who use stamps. Around the same time, Abū Dulaf al-Khazrajī (fl. ca. 952) composed a panegyric about the Banū Sāsān, an informal guild of beggars, thieves, and confidence tricksters. Mentioning their use of the ṭarsh to produce amulets:

The engraver of ṭarsh is he who engraves moulds for amulets. People who are illiterate and cannot write buy them from him. The seller keeps back the design which is on it so that he exhausts his supply of amulets on the common people and makes them believe that he wrote them. The mould is called the ṭarsh.

Two centuries later around 1232-1248 al-Jawbari seems to make mention of mass production of talismans, suggesting the printing process had become quite efficient.

Blockprinting wasn't limited to talismans, as shown by the printed Hajj certificates of the Umayyad mosque dating from the 11th to the 14th centuries. Later, Under Gaykhatu (1291-1295), the Ilkhanate was in severe financial straits due to the excesses of himself and his predecessors as well as the financial mismanagement of his vizier Sadr al-Din Zinjani, leaving the treasury empty. In response they introduced paper money (Jiaochao) in July 1284, outlawing metal coinage. This paper currency was printed as mentioned by Rashid al-Din. Printing the value of the denomination in the centre, with decorative Chinese characters on the border and, in red ink, the imperial seal. Though shortly after the government rescinded its policy in wake of resistance by merchants and the general populace, leaving no surviving examples.

Block printing wasn't restricted to the Mashriq, Ibn al-Abbar (1199-1260) active throughout al-Andalus and the Maghreb mentions:

He [Badr ibn Ahmed al-Khassi] was a slave of the Emir Abd Allah who manumitted him and put him in charge of the royal lands. Then al-Nasir appointed him to the vizerate, the office of gatekeeper, the leadership, the horses and the posts. He was without equal in the provinces. The official edicts were written in his house. Then he sent them to be printed (lil-ṭab'). Once they were printed they were returned to him and he sent them to the governors who executed them by his authority.

There is physical evidence in some prints that ṭarsh were at times made by pouring molten tin in clay moulds. According to Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī, an Iraqi poet of the fourteenth century:

"And in making moulds [ṭarsh] from tin for turning out amulets and charms, how often has my hand written on the mould in the script of Syriac and then that of phylactery-writing!"

The fragment A.Ch. 12.145 is a piece of an amulet in Arabic with a Coptic border (vertical text on the right).

That ṭarsh were sometimes carved or cast in Syriac and Hebrew ("phylactery-writing") is evidence that the prints were intended to impress illiterate people with their magical power rather than to be read. One printed Hebrew amulet is known, now at the University of Strasbourg. An Arabic amulet with a border in Syriac, Hebrew, Coptic, and Arabic writing is housed at the University of Utah. The Coptic writing is just transliterated Arabic text. The amulet A.Ch. 12.145, now in the Austrian National Library, is a fragment of a print made from the same ṭarsh as the Utah amulet. The use of Coptic may indicate that Egyptian Christians were among the buyers of prints.

The last extant example of a blockprinted talisman is dated with some certainty to the early 15th century, due to an Italian watermark on the paper dating to around 1405. After this date blockprinting vanishes without explanation and Medieval Arabic block printing had been completely forgotten by the time Joseph von Karabacek identified some prints in 1894.

Only the upper left corner of this page has survived. Both the foliated Kufic inscription in black ink and the cursive calligraphy in red ink are block printed. 11th–12th century

The amulet texts printed from ṭarsh contain quotations from the Qurʾān, lists of the names of God and invocations. Some have geometric forms like circles, teardrops, hexagrams and Octagrams. Others have Magic Squares. The decoration was printed using a separate block, and the text could also be printed with multiple blocks, combining different fonts.

These extensive highly detailed and elaborate decorative elements would've been very labor-intensive to carve and mark a major difference between handwritten and blockprinted amulets. Attempting to increase the visual appeal of the item, pointing to a sophisticated and cultured consumer.

The amulets were rolled up and placed in metal cylinders that were worn around the neck. There are examples of calligraphy and at least one example of a Qurʾānic print that looks like it could have been a page from a book. The longest known text is 107 lines, printed from two blocks on a strip of paper 2 in × 11 in (5.1 cm × 27.9 cm).

Gallery

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  Block-printed Egyptian talismanic scroll, 11th–12th century
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  Talismanic scroll with Kufic text in reserve, 11th century
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  Fatimid block-printed talismanic scroll, 11th century
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  Block printed talismanic scroll, 10th century
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  Fragment of a talismanic scroll, 12th century
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  Block printed talismanic scroll, 11th–12th century
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  Talismanic scroll with 8-pointed star, 11th century
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  Talismanic scroll, 11th century

References

Bibliography

• Bosworth, C. E. (1976). The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld: The Banū Sāsān in Arabic Society and Literature. Vol. 1 and 2. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
• Bulliet, R. W. (1987). "Medieval Arabic Ṭarsh: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Printing". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 107 (3): 427–438. doi:10.2307/603463. JSTOR 603463.
• Bulliet, R. W. (2000). "Ṭarsh". In Bearman, P. J.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. & Heinrichs, W. P. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume X: T–U. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 304. ISBN 978-90-04-11211-7.
• Levi Della Vida, G. (1944). "An Arabic Block Print". The Scientific Monthly. 59: 473–474.
• Richardson, Kristina (2021). Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture, and Migration. Bloomsbury Academic.
• Roper, G. (2010). "The History of the Book in the Muslim World". In Suarez, Michael F.; H. R. Woudhuysen (eds.). The Oxford Companion to the Book. Oxford University Press. pp. 321–339.
• Schaefer, K. R. (2006). Enigmatic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Museums. Leiden: E. J. Brill. doi:10.1163/9789047408529. ISBN 9789047408529.
• Schaefer, K. R. (2014). "Mediæval Arabic Block Printing: State of the Field". In Roper, G. (ed.). Historical Aspects of Printing and Publishing in Languages of the Middle East: Papers from the Symposium at the University of Leipzig, September 2008. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 1–16. doi:10.1163/9789004255975. ISBN 9789004255975.
• Schaefer, Karl R. (2022-04-19). "The Material Nature of Block Printed Amulets: What Makes Them Amulets?". Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context. Brill. pp. 180–208. ISBN 978-90-04-47148-1.

External links

• Amulet scroll (tarsh) with polychrome block print from The David Collection