At that time they were written in Hebrew dialects with bird feathers or quills. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europeans had difficultly in obtaining reeds and began to use quills. There is a specific reference to quills in the writings of St. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century. Quill pens were used until the nineteenth century.
The earliest historical record of a reservoir fountain pen dates back to the 10th century. In 953, Ma'Äd al-Mu'izz, the caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib via gravity and capillary action.
