What Did the Silk Road Write With in 1270? Brush, Reed, Bark, Leaf

What did the Silk Road write with around 1270? In a scribe’s room in Baghdad, a knife scrapes a dried reed. In an office in Khanbaliq, a clerk circles an ink stick on a stone. In Novgorod, an iron point scratches birch bark, and on the Malabar coast a stylus cuts a palm leaf. Around 1270 all four were in daily use on one road. In those same years, an emperor decided his empire needed an alphabet of its own. The film follows what the Silk Road wrote with and on around 1270: the Chinese brush, ink stick and inkstone, and the red seal on the Great Khan’s paper money as Marco Polo described it around 1298; the Muslim reed pen, the qalam, an inlaid brass pen case of about 1281, and the paper road from Samarkand to Baghdad, with the story of Talas in 751 that a historian calls just a story; parchment, the quill and the wax tablet in Latin Europe, where paper came late (the ban of Frederick II in 1231, the mills of Fabriano in 1276); birch bark letters from Novgorod, found since 1951, Himalayan birch bark in Kashmir and palm leaf in south India; and the Phags-pa script that Kublai Khan ordered in 1269, which officials were reluctant to learn and which was dropped after 1368. Follow the full route, east to west (The World of Wayward):    • Start Here: The 1270 Silk Road Journey (Ea...   The novel behind this series is Wayward, a trilogy set along this road. Trailer:    • WAYWARD | Epic Silk Road Historical Fictio...   Part of Life on the Silk Road, documentaries on daily life around 1270. More from the series: Silk Road Cities (documentaries on life along the Silk Road around 1270):    • Silk Road Cities   Chapters 0:00 Four Hands 1:15 The Brush and the Stone 2:44 The Reed and the Paper Mills 5:00 Skin, Wax, Bark and Leaf 7:14 The Khan’s New Letters 8:41 The Sentence Sources Reference and scholarship: Wikipedia, Qalam, Inkstick, Four Treasures of the Study, Khanbaliq, Bamboo and wooden slips, Papermaking, History of paper, Papyrus, Parchment, Pen, Quill, Iron gall ink, Wax tablet, Fabriano, Birch bark manuscript, Palm-leaf manuscript, Yaqut al-Musta’simi, Ibn al-Nadim, ʼPhags-pa script, Kublai Khan; Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Paper and papermaking” (Bloom); BabelStone, overview of the Phags-pa script; British Museum, collection record for the pen box of about 1281; historyofinformation.com (the ban of Frederick II in 1231, the Fabriano mills, the Talas story); Museo della Carta; Al-Furqan, article on paper in classical Persian texts; Inkwell Research, the Arabic portable scribe’s kit; Gulf News, “In Novgorod, history grows on trees”. Primary texts: Marco Polo, The Travels, Book 2, chapter 24 (Yule translation, Adelaide text); William of Rubruck, Rockhill translation, as quoted at factsanddetails.com and in the Saylor PDF. The evidence is uneven. Rubruck’s remarks were read in translations quoted on web pages, not in a full text, and the Fihrist was not read directly. The Baghdad mill of 794 or 795 rests on one secondary source, the ban of 1231 on one page, and the Fabriano date of 1276 on an old source that may be revised. The Talas story is told as a tale. A government office in Khanbaliq in 1270 is plausible, not attested. The Novgorod count is a figure of 2018 and keeps rising. Sources are paraphrased, not quoted. The Wayward trilogy These films grew out of the Wayward trilogy, historical novels by Fred Suh set on these roads around 1270. The books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/6502032990?... Music (YouTube Audio Library): “Tiburtina” by Schwartzy; “Sleep Music No. 1” by Chris Haugen; “Jomon Grove” by The Mini Vandals; “Curse Of Old” by Density & Time; “From Here on In” by Everet Almond; “A Distant Call” by Dan “Lebo” Lebowitz, Tone Seeker; “Rain Over Kyoto Station” by The Mini Vandals. AI disclosure Narration: AI voice (Kokoro). Images and short clips: AI-generated (Google Flow); maps and diagrams: drawn for this film. These are illustrations, not photographs or archival footage, and were reviewed for historical accuracy. Corrections are welcome in the comments. Subscribe for daily life on the 13th-century Silk Road, from the world of the Wayward trilogy:    / @wayward-trilogy   Topics: Silk Road writing, Chinese brush and inkstone, reed pen (qalam), papermaking, Talas 751, parchment and quill, Novgorod birch bark letters, palm leaf manuscripts, Phags-pa script, Kublai Khan #SilkRoad #HistoryOfWriting #MedievalHistory