Page:Historical essay on the art of bookbinding (IA 0130ARTO).pdf/17



HE Arabs were assuredly the original artistic bookbinders. Copies of their “Moallakât” were covered with various colored morocco, elaborately tooled and stamped in exquisite patterns, long ere the pillagers of the library of the Caliphs at Cairo transformed—horresco referens!—into shoes, the most valuable bindings of that library.

The Crusaders brought from Constantinople, Palestine and Egypt many specimens of the admirable bindings in morocco and silken stuffs, which, because of the resemblance of the covers to the gay plumage of a bird’s wing, were called alæ. They were copied by Italian bookbinders, but were not adopted until