The Earliest Paper Documents in the Vienna Collection Revisited

Abstract

In the context of the transition from papyrus to paper in Egypt in the 3rd to 4th c. Hijra, Josef von Karabacek has claimed that the Vienna collection hosts some of the very early paper documents, stemming already from the 2nd or early 3rd c. Hijra. However, in this two seminal publications (on Arabic paper in 1887 and in his catalogue of the Vienna collection in 1893) no plates are given. For this article, the early Arabic paper documents as listed by Karabacek have been located in the Vienna collection and been examined as regards their dating. It will be shown that most of the very early documents are most probably much older.