Tamerlane's Captive Chinese Printers: The Samarkand Printing Press

In 1394, Tamerlane's armies captured a group of Chinese craftsmen skilled in woodblock printing, bringing them to Samarkand alongside other artisans. This episode explores how these captive printers may have introduced movable type to Central Asia decades before Gutenberg, and how the Timurid court used block-printed amulets, talismans, and administrative documents. We look at the evidence: Ibn Arabshah's mention of 'Chinese paper with black marks', the discovery of a 14th-century printed sheet in Turfan, and the role of Buddhist and Manichaean printing traditions along the Silk Road. Could the first printing press in the Islamic world have been set up in Samarkand, only to vanish without a trace? Lucas and Luna discuss the tantalizing clues and the scholarly debate around them, including the work of historian Thomas Allsen on cross-cultural exchange in the Mongol era. #Tamerlane #TimuridEmpire #PrintingPress #Samarkand #WoodblockPrinting #SilkRoad #ChineseCraftsmen #IbnArabshah #ThomasAllsen #CulturalExchange #CentralAsia #History #FexingoHistory #MovableType #Manichaeism #Buddhism #Turfan #Gutenberg Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo