soot (lampblack)

Ingredients

soot, bile, crystallized sugar, iron sulfate, Arabic gum, rosewater, water

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

The recipe used for the soot ink preparation is as follows: '3.2 g soot, 6.4 g bile, 1.6 g crystallized sugar, 1.6 g of iron sulfate, 10 g Arabic gum, 75 g rosewater'. The preparation process involved: 1. Mixing soot and bile and drying the mixture. 2. Adding 2 g of water and crushing the mixture. 3. Drying under sunlight. 4. Melting crystallized sugar and iron sulfate in 1.6 g of water separately. 5. Adding the melted sugar, iron sulfate, and Arabic gum (with honey consistency) to the dried soot and crushing again. 6. Drying the mixture once more. 7. Adding rosewater to produce approximately 81 g of ink (p. 5-6). Note: one 'dirham' in the original units corresponds to 3.2075 g in Ottoman standards (p. 6).

Evidence

"In this paper, we report the crystallite size of the graphitic phase observed in a soot ink sample prepared based on an original Ottoman recipe in the 18th century for the first time."

Remarks

The study highlights that in the Ottoman Empire, soot production and ink manufacture were separate industries due to environmental concerns regarding smoke. Soot manufacturing facilities were often established outside city centers, while ink manufacture occurred within the city, such as near Tekfur Palace (p. 2). A unique method of soot collection involved the utilization of oil lamp smoke in mosques, specifically the Suleymaniye Mosque, where air circulation vents led soot to dedicated chambers for collection by calligraphers (p. 2).