As early as the 10th century, al-Muqaddasi listed tutty from Kuhbanan as one of the major exports of Kerman province.

He wrote that it formed in finger-like "pipes", which were then purified by being roasted in long furnaces by the same mountainside where the ore was extracted.

In the early 1200s, Yaqut al-Hamawi similarly described Kuhbanan, along with the nearby town of Behabad, as a major exporter of tutty.

Marco Polo visited Kuhbinan, which he called Cobinan, in the 1300s, and provided a detailed description of the local tutty industry.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the British traveler Percy Sykes witnessed the production of tutty in Kuhbanan; the process he described was essentially the same as that used hundreds of years earlier.