More than a month ago, on my 90th birthday, two non-routine things happened to me. One was rereading an essay I wrote three years ago — Being Elderly, a Sannaysi, in the Information Age. I wrote there that my mind has become my university, a place where experiences, information and ideas are stored, that the internet has become my library and that the computer makes the act of writing infinitely easier than did either the pen or the typewriter. Why then, am I always fretting over the current political scene when I could be thinking creatively about other matters?
Next was finding a small brass object, one of my many curios, while searching in an upstairs closet for – I’ve forgotten what. Other souvenirs remind me of a person, a place, an incident but this one does none of that;
it simply puzzles me. I’ve owned it for decades without knowing quite what it is, what it is called or even where it comes from. All it brings to mind, vaguely, is our apartment on the Place du Pantheon in Paris and a young man from Lebanon who became a family friend while Ravi and I were living there. I wonder if he gave it to me.
I decided the time had arrived, finally, to discover my curio’s identity. No one I know here where I now live would have the foggiest idea of what it is, so I went to the internet. I noted the curio’s form and guessing at the part that may have held ink, did an on-line search for “antique brass inkwell pen,” which brought up, all on commercial sites, six or seven photographs of items like mine for sale.
One, with Arabic letters and the engraved art work less worn than on mine, is titled “Antique Vintage Islamic Persian Brass Fully Inscribed Qalamdan Pen Box & Inkwell.” I asked a friend who speaks Urdu, Persian influenced Hindi, what qalamdan means and he responded, “Pen holder,” which sent me to my enormous etymological 1950s Oxford Universal Dictionary. It has no entry for “qalamdan.” The word never came into English. From the Wiktionary: qalam is Persian for pen and dan for container.
All the brass penholders pictured on-line were named as qalamdans and with prices ranging from $200 or so to over $2000, the pricier ones being somewhat larger than mine, in fine condition, engraved with Arabic calligraphy and Persian designs. Mine is about the same length, 23 cm., and weight, 440 grams, as the others but not quite as high or as wide as most, only 2¾ cm by 1½ cm. All are described as Middle Eastern or Ottoman and from the 19th century. One is described as an antique Middle Eastern travelling pen case and attached inkwell, used by traveling scribes to document agreements and events in the times when few people could write. Another, similar to mine in decoration, length and weight but different in being wider and nearly twice as tall, is described as a traveling scribe’s quill or pen holder and small attached inkwell, and that qalamdans were used by scribes who traveled from town to town, that they were hung on the scribes’ belts with the ink pot holding them in place.
Continuing the search for information, I entered “qalamdan” into google search and that brought forth another sort of container, these made of silver, bronze, papier-mâché or ivory and they looked more like the sort of pen holder a working scribe would own and use.
The earliest qalamdan I found on-line is in the Walters Art Museum, originally from Tabriz, Iran, circa 1300 CE,
in brass, silver and gold inlay, measuring 25 cm x 3 cm. It has an ink well and inside a shelf for the pen with a compartment underneath for needed equipment. “It was carried on the owner’s belt and must have belonged to a statesman, since its side is inscribed with the maxim: — Your government shall rise without declining, if it has as its basis the largest number of people from every place.– Hunt imagery, like the scenes on the box, was popular among the nobility as this sport required the valor and skills also needed in battle.”
From this source — a 19th century lacquered and painted papier-mâché qalamdan from Isfahan, Iran “The primary function of a pen box (qalamdan) was as a writing implement intended to hold a number of tools associated with the art and act of writing, including reed pens, an inkwell, liqah (a cotton wool substance used to absorb excess ink), a penknife, a qat’zan (a flat resting board made of horn), a whetstone (for sharpening the knife), a small spoon, and a pair of scissors. These accessories were considered essential elements for a scribe. The box that kept these elements was deemed, by association, as important as the person who handled its contents, with the quality of the box’s decoration directly reflecting the status of the scribe or patron. … Pen boxes were carried by penmen of all ranks, often tucked into the shawls tied around their waists, symbolising a badge of their trade. So esteemed was the pen box that even Shahs commissioned them; these rare examples are confirmed by their inscriptions. The earliest specimens of this type date from the reign of Shah Sulayman Safavi (1664-95), but later Qajar examples commissioned by members of high bureaucracy also exist throughout the nineteenth century.” The Qajar Dynasty, from 1789 to 1925 was the last of the Persian dynasties.
This qalamdan by Shaykh_Muhammad (Shaykh Kamal Sabzavar), 1587, Gujarat, India, in the Freer Gallery of Art,
is in lacquered teakwood with mother-of-pearl inlay. From Stuart Cary Welch’s India: Art and Culture, 1300-1900 1985 (page 139) “Like other qalamdans made for discerning and affluent penmen, this one is inscribed with its maker’s name and the date of its execution as well as a virtual anthology of appropriate Arabic and Persian verses.” I suspect it would have been owned by a wealthy gentleman more interested in Arabic calligraphy and Persian poetry than in the more practical uses of writing.
I had never before heard or read of a pen that needed a holder. When I was in school, also for my children, we each had a wooden pencil box to hold our pencils, sometimes a pencil sharpener, an eraser, even a ruler. What sort of pen was held in a brass pen box centuries ago? And what about the ink for it and would the writing have been on paper or another writing material?
The pen once held in my qalamdan, I learned, would have been little different from the earliest known pens ever, found in Egyptian sites dating from the 4th century BCE,
and it would have been made from a reed trimmed and cut to have the essential feature of a pen, the nib. Such pens were used for writing hieroglyphics on papyrus with a lampblack ink and they continued for millennia to be the most usual writing implement. However, even earlier, in the 4th millennium BCE, in Mesopotamia and Sumer, with the invention of writing, the reed was used as a stylus having a squared off end to press triangular marks and short straight lines into a clay tablet, to create records written in cuneiform.
In a society where most people were peasant farmers with no particular need for the written word, reading and writing was the work of a specialist, the scribe who wrote and read manuscripts. He was the one craftsman accepted into the inner circles of the society’s elite classes, the priests who represented the religion and the rulers who ran the government. For the religious establishment scribes put into writing the society’s sacred beliefs and for the ruling elite they wrote and kept historical and legal records while serving as secretarial staff and administrators. In his public roles the scribe was a gentleman but underlying that was his craftsman’s knowledge not only of the written word but of where and how to acquire his essential tool, the reed pen, and the skills for making, maintaining and using it.
“To make a reed pen, scribes would take an undamaged piece of reed about 20 cm, and leave the end that would be cut into point in water for some time. This ensured that the pen would not splinter when cut. They crafted a series of cuts that would cut the nib of the pen until it was flat enough, and pointed. The pointed end was then cut off, not too far from the point, to form a squared end suitable for writing. At the end they would start the split, which would act as a primitive ink barrel, from the tip of the nib and lengthen it until it was of the proper length. They made care not to lengthen it extensively, because the pen was at risk of snapping in half. Being skilled at making reed pens was important for early scribes due to low durability of the pen. ….”
Further information — “ … Rather than dipping the pen directly into the well a small piece of wool or felt called a liq was used to absorb a smaller amount of ink. The liq served a couple purposes, it held the ink in suspension, it cleaned the pen and was less messy than dipping directly into the well.”
And ink for the pen
in my qalamdan? Having grown up using a dip pen I could not imagine the watery ink in the usual glass inkwell staying safely in the tiny brass qalamdan inkwell. My Urdu speaking friend suggested “India ink” and I returned to my etymological dictionary. “India ink. 1665. A black pigment made in China and Japan, sold in sticks; it consists of lampblack made into a paste with a solution of gum and dried. Called also China ink.”
Here for how the ancient Egyptians made ink for their hieroglyphics and colored inks for the wall paintings. For the ink used in my qalam — In China, the ink used with a fine brush for drawings and for writing had appeared by 2000 BCE. By the 4th century CE, Chinese formulated ink was being made in India. Surely, through the Silk Road, India ink was known, made and used early on in Persian lands. In medieval Europe, Roman carbon and iron gall inks for writing on papyrus were used also for writing on parchment and vellum until the mid 1600s, after Shakespeare’s time, when Europeans began importing India ink from India.
And the writing material? Papyrus was the earliest for the reed pen. It’s a material similar to thick paper, made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge, from the Nile Delta, first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the 4th millennium BCE and for millennia traded throughout the Mediterranean region as the main writing material. Paper came to the world from China, invented there in the 2nd century BCE, first for wrapping things, then for painting and writing with a brush. It reached the Indian subcontinent by the first century CE. Archaeological evidence shows that paper was known and used in Persian cities, improved upon for manuscript writng by being made from rags rather than wood, even before the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th century, before the adoption of Islam and the Arabic script. After the 8th century the Persian Islamic civilization helped spread paper-making into the Middle East. Europeans, finally, in the 11th century, via Andalusia, Muslim Spain, acquired paper and paper-making. By the 13thcentury it was well established and had replaced its precursors.
The printing press, which changed everything, including a return to wood produced paper, was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440.
This is a history of writing but not of the written word. The written word as a concept and an entity came into existence not with the scribes in service to the elite but in far more humble circumstances. It began with men who traded goods between societies or from one sector of the society to another, with men sometimes influential with the ruling elite but rarely in the elite. Traders invented writing for totally practical purposes, to have a record of the goods they owned and sold, of contracts they made and fulfilled. For instance, in cuniform, on a set of Sumerian clay tablets is a list of 21 sheep, 2 lambs, 36 goats received and passing inspection, plus 11 oxen, 5 sheep, 3 lambs, 10 rams, 2 goats delivered to the market. The tablets are from approximately 8000 BCE. Eventually the society’s elites took notice of this innovation, of writing the spoken word, and appointed scribes to gradually expand on the merchants’ script, to create a literature in fine language that recorded the society’s religious beliefs, that glorified its ruler and his lineage. A well-known text recorded on Sumerian clay tablets, in approximately 5000 BCE, is the Epic of Gilgamesh , considered to be the world’s oldest work of literature.
The next critical, definitive step forward in writing was the invention of the alphabet. I wrote here in a previous blog post about the Phoenicians, a thalassocracy, a network of merchant city-state ports, each city-state politically independent from its hinterland, a sea-based civilization spread across the Mediterranean from 1500 BCE to 300 BCE. “… It was from the Phoenicians that we inherited the alphabet, a way to write letters that represent phonemes, the basic significant sound units from which words are formed. It is a way to write a language that can be easily learned and applied to any language. A scribe writing cuneiform or Egyptians hieroglyphics memorized thousand of characters to achieve proficiency in his craft. Other persons, but not many, could learn enough of the more frequently used characters to attain literacy. By contrast, a trader with his alphabet could quickly master a script to write and read his language or another language, to keep records, and if he, or she, were interested, to read a document written by a government official, a poet, a scholar. Through their maritime trade the Phoenicians spread writing and reading by alphabet across their territory. One variant was adopted by the Greeks, who transmitted it to the Romans.
“The Aramaic alphabet, which evolved from the Phoenician in the 7th century BCE and became the official script of the Persian Empire, appears to be the ancestor of nearly all the modern alphabets of Asia. Most alphabetic scripts of India are descended from the Brahmi script, which is often believed to be a descendant of the Aramaic script, transmitted via the Persians to the Mauryan Empire (322 BCE – 185 BCE) and the Gupta Empire (320 — 550 CE) of India — and from there to Sumatra, Java and Bali. ..”
The Persian word “qalam” is Arabic, borrowed from kálamos, the Greek word for reed. In Islamic cultures the writing of words and of the alphabet letters is a high art form as well as a means of communication. The prevalence of calligraphy, the art of writing, in Islamic art reflects the centrality of writing and the written text in Islam. The Koran, literacy to read it and Arabic as an international language linked people together across the world. It is noteworthy that the Prophet Muhammad is related to have said: “The first thing God created was the pen.”
I read that a scribe would own a 15th century metal qalamdan such as this one but I imagine a Persian or Ottoman merchant having commissioned it to hold the equipment he needs to keep business records as he travels. It is sturdy, maybe in bronze, measuring about 27 cm by 8 cm by 9 cm, has a locked lid, and the merchant being prosperous, is beautifully engraved. It contains, of course, an inkwell on one end, a removable shelf for his pens and a space underneath for the equipment needed to maintain them.
The qalamdans pictured on-line are from Persia, a land outside my personal experience. From reading I know a little of the Persianate society but almost nothing of Persian history, of Persia’s imperial dynasties beginning in the 6th century BCE and continuing through many Empires into the 20th century. It was a great civilization centered in today’s Iran but covering a vast area that included Arabs, Caucasians (Georgian, Armenian, Dagestani) and Turkic peoples (Seljuqs, Ottomans, Ghaznavids). “A Persianate culture flourished for nearly fourteen centuries. It was a mixture of Persian and Islamic cultures that eventually underwent Persianization and became the dominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of Greater Iran, Asia Minor, and South Asia.
I have two blog posts reviewing a movie on the legendary Omar Khayyam of the 11th century, a major figure in Persian history. The discussion here includes photos, useful maps and descriptions of Samarkand’s magnificent mosques and madrasahs and of grand buildings in Bukhara. Trying to make sense of inaccuracies in the movie’s plot and of mischaracterizations concerning religious matters led me into exploring the history of the period and presenting here some of what I learned. Persian history is fascinating and relevant to today’s world.
Learning that the Persian word for pen came from “reed,” the material used for making it, had me wondering how “pen” came into English. From my ancient dictionary – “Pen” came from “penne,” early French, originally meaning feather. In certain large birds the barrel of a wing feather, the quill, is a tube that can be cut, pointed and split into nibs at its lower end.
Comparing the reed pen and the quill pen.
The earliest known written works in Europe were found recently in an excavation in London, documents carved in with a metal stylus on wax covered wooden tablets, made by military men, Roman conquerors. Here for a description of the tablets and how they were made. On one tablet is recorded the bringing of 20 loads of provisions to London from Veruilamium, a Roman auxiliary (castrum) just south of Hadrian’s Wall in northern England. It was dated Oct. 21, 62.
In Rome at that time, scribes and literate persons were writing with a reed pen on papyrus. We have 
a Roman fresco portrait of a young man with a papyrus scroll, from Herculaneum, 1st century CE.. In the 7th century CE, however, the fabled scholar, Isidore of Seville, Spain, most likely using a quill pen, wrote of the varieties of papyrus being sold in Roman markets. Papyrus had become expensive, was unsuitable for western Europe’s climate and could not compete with the cheaper, locally produced, more durable parchment and vellum. The quill pen, in use by the 6th century CE, produces a line more suitable for writing on leather. Besides the quill being readily available, it has better flexibility than the reed and retains ink in its hollow shaft, allowing for more writing time between dippings.
The steel nib for the dip pen, first manufactured in a factory in Birmingham, England in 1822, replaced the quill. A metal point is sharp, long lasting and requires no skill to make or maintain. By the late 19th century, or at least the early 20th, the fountain pen, a nib pen that contains an internal reservoir of liquid ink, was in common use.
I wrote above of the printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440, as the innovation that changed everything. Quoting from this short, highly informative, delightful to read article — “Knowledge is power and the invention of the mechanical movable type printing press helped disseminate knowledge wider and faster than ever before. It was the key to unlocking the modern age. With the newfound ability to inexpensively mass-produce books on every imaginable topic, revolutionary ideas and priceless ancient knowledge were placed in the hands of every literate European, whose numbers doubled every century.”
Martin Luther, whose writings changed the course of religious and cultural history in the West, stated: Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.”
Considering my brass holder of a reed pen, I wonder why all those like mine pictured on-line for sale are from the 1800s and none earlier. Most are higher and wider than mine and could have, unlike mine, held a quill as well as a reed pen. I note also that only one other brass qalamdan viewed has, like mine, a floral design rather than Arabic calligraphy or Persian images engraved on the holder. No other has, like mine, a Celtic knot on the inkwell, a design that brings to mind central Anatolia’s Galatian history. I wonder if my qalamdan is Turkish, and given it being suitable for a reed pen only, from an earlier era and/or a more isolated region.
Another question concerns the statements on-line that this sort of qalamdan was owned by a travelling scribe, a designation of the owner’s occupation that seems to me not quite right. I have images of the 1800s and the industrial revolution and of fundamental changes in European societies. Gone are the royal courts, centers of sacred learning, craftsmen in guilds, peasant villages as the base on which all of that rested. Instead, I think of factories and farms where some 80% of the people labored while a small elite continued in power and a middle class of merchants, shopkeepers, accountants, managers prospered, of transportation by railway and steamboat, of the telegraph, of gas light in the home, shops, offices, the factory, on the streets.
The typewriter came onto the market in 1880 or so, not yet affecting office staffing patterns. In most governmental and business offices, professional penman, scriveners, were hired to take dictation, to write or copy documents and records. A famous work of fiction featuring scriveners is the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, first published in 1853. This, of course, is of Europe and the U.S. where the industrial revolution was in process. Elsewhere, the Sublime State of Persia, 1785-1925, was ruled by the Qatar dynasty with an agricultural and craft based economy that had been encroached upon by Western colonialism but not yet greatly changed.
In more traditional settings, still Persian or Ottoman, not many ordinary workers or rural folk were fully literate, and a man who was highly literate could work as a scrivener. He could sit with a small desk in a public place where passersby could pay him a fee to read or write a letter or a document. In this drawing the scrivener in Istanbul seems to be using a reed pen. In a painting of a scene in Mexico in 1828 the scrivener is using a quill. Here for the public scrivener with a typewriter and knowledge of how to fill in official papers replacing the scrivener with a pen.
Descriptions I read of the box sort of qalamdan include nothing on the brass qalamdans. A scribe during the imperial era would have owned a fine box qalamdan as a sign of his highly respected role in elite society. Would he also have owned a brass qalamdan to use while away from his workplace, fulfilling duties of office in other locations? For how long would the ink in the brass qalamdan have lasted, how long before the equipment in the box qalamdan was needed to keep the pen functional? For a few hours? For longer than that?
Elaborately decorated paper-maché box qalamdans dated 19th century, 
such as this one from the LACMA, open with the inkwell shown and contents laid alongside. The other is in the Walters Art Museum. The approximate size of the 19th century Persian qalamdans I saw on-line is 24 cm long, 4 cm wide and 4 cm deep.
Describing the qalamdan here named Battle Scenes and Pastoral Scenes is this text: “From the 15th century, lacquer was used primarily for bookbinding in Iran. From the 17th century onward, however, it became the primary medium for the pen box. A massively popular item, the lacquer 
pen box served as the vehicle for the dissemination of new styles, in particular, farangi-sazi (the Europeanized style) characterized by the integration of Western motifs and pictorial techniques. European landscape scenes, as seen on the object’s side, were of great interest in Iran and a frequent motif on pen boxes.”
Here for a view of a galamdan from Iran 1701—1900.
Describing a qalamdan named Lacquer Pen Box with Royal Audience Scenesca, 1870-90 in The Met Fifth Avenue art museum is this text: “Kiyani (royal) penboxes with cartouches framing audience scenes, celebrate Persian kingship by linking the ruling monarch with Iran’s great historic and legendary rulers. This example features the court of Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848–96) at the center of the lid. Other audience scenes of Persian rulers, such as Genghis Khan and Khusrau Parviz, as well as legendary kings from the Shahnama (Book of Kings), such as Afrasiyab and Manuchihr, are each identified by inscriptions. Such penboxes were not made for the market but were often commissioned and given as presentation pieces.” I imagine an ordinary scrivener owned a box qalamdan as well as one in brass, but not one so fine as those shown here.
I have no further information on the life of my brass galamdan. It remains a mystery to me. No matter. Just reading and thinking about it has been an adventure into history.
Addendum – Mira Kamdar writes that her grandfather in Jaipur, India had such pen-holders to use in his work, as well as a scribe assistant to aid him. Her father, in diplomatic service in Burma some sixty years ago, used a fountain pen, known to him as an ink-tub pen.
Iris sans frontières 
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The movie Charade and my stamp collection
June 19, 2019 by Iris
This guide to a walk down the Champs Elysees helps locate the Carré Marigny and the stamp market
between the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Concorde. I think in terms of the metro stops. First a stop at the Etoile and next the George V. For going to the Petit and Grand Palais one exits from the Franklin D Roosevelt stop at the rond-point or the Champs Elysees Clemenceau, for the Place de la Concorde, at the Concord.
Hepburn and Crant
are twice in the Carré Marigny, the first time with a large audience of small children happily watching the traditional puppet show with its central figure Guignol. The second time we see more of the park and finally Hepburn and others in the stamp market moving through the narrow, crowded aisle between the two rows of temporary covered stalls, 
the sort set up by the city for weekly street food markets such as the one in front of my apartment building on Blvd Raspail, but here each table covered with innumerable stamps, books of stamps, sheets of stamps hanging from the top and side railings. It’s a scene I visited weekly for years, where I had my favorite venders and exchanged greetings with a few of the other regulars. On seeing it my heart skipped a beat. (Here for photos of the stamp market)
I watched the stamp market scene one more time before returning the DVD. I suppose my stamp collection has become another of my curios, but one that is especially important to me. I still find my stamps endlessly interesting.
It was the Paris stamp market that turned me into a stamp collector. One afternoon, coming out of the Champs-Élysées – Clemenceau metro on my way to a favorite bookstore on Avenue Matignon, I noticed people milling about at the Avenue Gabriel, plus further into the park another center of activity, and stopped to investigate. At the street corner were tables covered with folders and various containers of postage stamps and men, most of them quite young, discussing, exchanging, purchasing stamps. Beyond that site was the stamp market. I joined in, began looking at the stamps and for the first time regarded them as something other than items necessary for using the postal service.
In Paris, as I examined that multitude of stamps, each beautifully printed with a different image, it occurred to me that someone on high was deciding what places, what objects, what events in France and French history were worthy of being honored by a postage stamp everyone everywhere could see, appreciate and use. I thought this meaningful and that I should pay attention, become informed. I knew virtually nothing about France. Ravi, not I, had decided we would live in Paris, just as his career choices and preference had always determined where we lived. I went along, made each apartment or house our home, saw to the children’s schooling and our family life. For myself, in the States, in Somalia, and in Turkey I managed to teach or do a research project part-time, all of which helped me make friends, engage in the environment and keep my professional identity intact.
Paris, however, was different. I soon learned that opportunities for working in my field, for working at all, were non-existent, but alternatively, that doing short-term consultancies in developing countries might be possible. Finally, with persistence and some luck, I became a consultant for UNICEF, WHO and other international organizations concerned with public health, work for which I had prepared myself.
At home, in Paris, I spent much of my time preparing for another assignment elsewhere, hanging out in a social science library, talking with professors and mostly foreign students. I became friendly with a few French individuals but circumstances seemed always against our becoming friends. (discussed here in the letter dated New York 13 January 1995)
After a while I also collected other French stamps, arranging them in an album by Region and Department as a picture guide for what would be interesting to see and visit when Ravi proposed that we drive somewhere over a weekend or for a vacation. I learned more this way than by following the usual tourist destinations. Soon, stamp collecting being additive, I spread out
to small collections on other countries, especially Turkey, and to a collection on architecture. Most surprising is my album of stamps issued to celebrate the victory and the end World War II, a collection initially inspired by the American stamp of troops marching down the Champs Elysees, planes overhead, the magnificent Arc de Triomphe in the background.
In my fourth stage of life, my stamp collection reminds me of where I have been, of what I saw and experienced, of who I am.
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