Note 10 — III. Origin of the Materials of Writing, Tablets, etc.

Meerman, well known as a writer upon the antiquities of printing, offered a reward for the earliest manuscript upon linen paper; and, in a treatise upon the subject, fixed the date of its invention between 1270 and 1300. But Mr. Schwandner, of Vienna, is said to have found in the imperial library a small charter bearing the date of 1243 on such paper. But more than one Arabian writer asserts the manufacture of linen paper to have been carried on at Samarcand early in the eighth century, having been brought thither from China; and, what is more conclusive, Casiri positively declares many manuscripts in the Escurial of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to be written on this substance.—Bibliotheca Hispanica Arabica, t. 11, p. 9.