(14:7), and is typical of compositions written upon marbled paper produced after the 16th century in
Central Asia,
Iran,
India, and
Turkey. The method of floating colors on the surface of
mucilaginous sizing is thought to have emerged in the regions of
Greater Iran and
Central Asia by the late 15th century. It may have first appeared during the end of the
Timurid dynasty, whose final capital was in the city of
Herat, located in
Afghanistan today. Other sources suggest it emerged during the subsequent
Shaybanid dynasty, in the cities of
Samarqand or
Bukhara, in what is now modern
Uzbekistan. Whether or not this method was somehow related to earlier
Chinese or
Japanese methods mentioned above has never been concretely proven. Several
Persian historical accounts refer to () , often shortened to ().
Annemarie Schimmel translated this term as 'clouded paper' in
English. While
Sami Frashëri claimed in his
Kamus-ı Türki, that the term was "more properly derived from the
Chagatai word " (); however, he did not reference any source to support this assertion. In contrast, most historical Persian,
Turkish, and
Urdu texts refer to the paper as alone. Today in
Turkey, the art is commonly known as , a
cognate of the term first documented in the 19th century. In
Iran, many now employ a variant term, (), meaning 'cloud and wind' for a modern method made with oil colors. The art first emerged and evolved during the long 16th century in
Persia and
Transoxiana then spread to the
Ottoman Turkey, as well as
Mughal and the
Deccan Sultanates in
India. Within these regions, various methods emerged in which colors were made to float on the surface of a bath of viscous liquid mucilage or
size, made from various plants including
fenugreek seed,
onion,
gum tragacanth (
astragalus) and
salep (the roots of
Orchis mascula), among others. A pair of leaves purported to be the earliest examples of this paper, preserved in the Kronos collection, bears rudimentary droplet-motifs. One of the sheets bears an accession notation on the reverse stating "note: these rare abris ..." () and adds that it was "among the gifts from Iran" to the royal library of
Ghiyath Shah, the ruler of the
Malwa Sultanate, dated
Hijri year 1
Dhu al-Hijjah 901/11 August 1496 of the
Common Era. Approximately a century later, a technically advanced approach using finely prepared mineral and organic pigments and combs to manipulate the floating colors resulted in comparatively elaborate, intricate, and mesmerizing overall designs. Both literary and physical evidence suggests that before 1600, a
Safavid-era émigré to India named Muḥammad Ṭāhir developed many of these innovations. Later that century, Indian marblers combined the technique with
stencil and
resist masking methods to create
miniature paintings, attributed to the
Deccan sultanates and especially the city of
Bijapur in particular, during the
Adil Shahi dynasty in the 17th century. The earliest examples of Ottoman marbled paper may be the margins attached to a cut paper découpage manuscript of the () by the poet Arifi (popularly known as the ['Ball and Polo-stick']) completed by Mehmed bin Gazanfer in 1539–40. Recipes ascribed to one early master by the name of Shebek, appear posthumously in the earliest, anonymously compiled Ottoman
miscellany on the art known as the (, 'An Arrangement of a Treatise on Ebrî'), dated on the basis of internal evidence to after 1615. Many in
Turkey attribute another famous 18th-century master
Hatip Mehmed Efendi (died 1773) with developing motif and perhaps early floral designs and refer to them as "Hatip" designs. The current Turkish tradition of dates to the mid-19th century, with a series of masters associated with a branch of the
Naqshbandi Sufi order based at what is known as the (Lodge of the Uzbeks), located in
Sultantepe, near
Üsküdar. The founder of this line, Sadık Effendi (died 1846) allegedly first learned the art in
Bukhara and brought it to
Istanbul, then taught it to his sons Edhem and Salıh. Based upon this later practice, many Turkish marblers assert that
Sufis practiced the art for centuries; however, little evidence supports this claim. Sadık's son Edhem Effendi (died 1904) manufactured papers as a kind of
cottage industry for the , to supply Istanbul's burgeoning printing industry with the paper, purportedly tied into bundles and sold by weight. Many of his papers feature designs made with turpentine, analogous to what English-speaking marblers refer to as the
stormont pattern. The premier student of Edhem Efendi,
Necmeddin Okyay (1885–1976), first taught the art at the
Fine Arts Academy in
Istanbul. He famously innovated elaborate floral designs, in addition to
, a method of writing traditional calligraphy using a
gum arabic resist masking applied before marbling the sheet. Okyay's premier student, Mustafa Düzgünman (1920–1990), taught many contemporary marblers in
Turkey today. He codified the traditional repertoire of patterns, to which he only added a floral daisy design, after the manner of his teacher. == History in Europe ==