carbon blacks, soot browns (bistre)

Ingredients

soot, powdered charcoal, Acacia farnesiana, Acacia nilotica, Acacia polyacantha, Acacia senegal, Acacia seyal, Acacia sieberiana

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

Ethnocultural recipes define tawada or wanke as inks made from soot (bistre) and zube from powdered charcoal, used in Qur’anic schools (p. 5). All recipes included gum. Replicative experiments indicated that saturated solutions of gum, i.e., equal or nearly equal parts gum to liquid, were the norm (p. 5). Processing involved homogenizing materials into finer products to be used in suspension in gummed water (p. 4).

Evidence

"The true black inks were identified microscopically as carbon blacks. Carbon inks were indicated by the presence of finely divided opaque particles as seen microscopically but the particles were neither so fine nor so even as in a lampblack type."

Remarks

These inks vary from glossy dense black to pale light brown and are sometimes faint and transparent (p. 3). Writing was performed using reed-style pens with nibs of various thicknesses (p. 3). The study examined over 12,000 folios in 14 repositories (p. 2).