In Iraq, man knew writing for the first time; the first library was organized, the first school set up, the first epic written. In the fourth millennium B.C., man devised writing on clay tablets, in Sumer, and the accumulation of knowledge became possible., the clay-tablets being the first books of man.
Long ages after that, the early Chinese invented paper, and this invention was carried by caravans from China to Arabia, where the first paper plants were established in Baghdad, Syria and Egypt, particularly in the reign of Haroun Al-Rasheed. Via Sicily and Spain, Europe began to import the Arabian paper.
The Arabs are also credited with the development of book-binding, the earliest examples of which date back to the 9th century A.D. printing had its earliest examples in the Sumerian cylinder seals before the Chinese devised wooden letters to pave the way for Guttenberg, the inventor of modern printing.
