Material properties of Islamic paper

Heritage Science

Table 1 Summary of the techniques used in this paper, with the corresponding number of samples

Technique	No. of samples analysed
Iodine test	228
Raspail test	146
Visual assessment for polishing	228
Surface roughness	100
Surface gloss	228
Specular/diffuse reflectance ratio	22
SEM	20
FTIR	37
Fibre furnish	15
pH determination	70
DP determination	60

The numbers differ for different reasons; in some cases, there was not enough sample (e.g. for DP determination) and in other cases the available data was enough for calibration (e.g. in the case of pH) to support a hypothesis. The number of analyses for the presence of starch and polishing was considered crucial for the key hypothesis of this paper, therefore, all the available samples were analysed