# Konigil village: 8th-century Samarkand paper

> Konigil, 15 km east of Samarkand, is the only workshop still making mulberry-bark paper by the 8th-century method that Chinese POWs brought to the city in 751 CE.

Samarkand paper became famous in the medieval world after the **Battle of Talas (751 CE)** — the Abbasid Caliphate captured Chinese papermakers from the Tang army and settled them in Samarkand, the nearest major Islamic city. Their technique replaced Egyptian papyrus and animal-hide parchment across the Islamic world within a century.

The **Meros Paper Mill** at Konigil village, run by the Mukhtarov family, revived the craft in the 1990s after Soviet suppression. The process:

1. Strip inner bark from three-year-old mulberry branches (silkworm season yields the softest fibre).
2. Boil the bark in wood-fired copper kettles for ~24 hours.
3. Pound the softened fibre with a water-wheel-driven hammer for 6+ hours.
4. Slurry the pulp, dip a fine screen to form individual sheets.
5. Press, sun-dry, then polish with agate to achieve the characteristic soft sheen.

The paper is bought by museums (the Louvre, Hermitage, and Islamic manuscript conservators) for restoring 9th–15th-century documents written on the same material.

Visitors can watch the full process free of charge and buy paper, notebooks and prints in the small shop.

---
Keywords: Konigil, paper, Samarkand, craft, Silk Road, mulberry
Updated: 2026-08-15
Category: destinations
URL: https://uzbguidedtours.com/kb/kb-samarkand-konigil-paper