The literature of Arabic Alchemy

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CHAPTER 18

THE LITERATURE OF ARABIC ALCHEMY

THE NATURE AND AIMS OF ALCHEMY

Many thousands of pages have been written by modern scholars on the subject of alchemy, but it cannot be said that all the obscurities that render the subject so difficult have yet been satisfactorily elucidated. These obscurities include the actual definition of the term "alchemy", its origins in East and West, the authorship of many of the extant texts, the motives and beliefs of the alchemists, the methods they used and the identification of many of their materials. Only in the case of laboratory equipment and processes do we have any firm data, largely because most types of equipment used by the alchemists have survived into the present or recent past. Moreover, in several alchemical works, notably those of Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya0 al-Razi, many pieces of equipment are clearly described and illustrated and can be understood by comparing them with their modern counterparts. Even so, although the basic purposes of the equipment can usually be determined, uncertainty as to the course of a given process may remain if we do not know the precise composition of the materials being processed. Much of the obscurity of the subject is due to its esoteric nature and the consequent use made by its practitioners of analogy, allusion and cryptic utterances. A second difficulty lies in the tendency of many writers to attribute their own work to earlier, sometimes mythological, personages. A third problem, particularly for the student of Islamic alchemy, is the mass of manuscript material that has yet to be edited and studied. We shall have occasion to return to some of these problems a little later. Meanwhile it may be of service to set down the three broad categories into which protochemistry may be divided. (The terms for these categories are those used by Joseph Needham.1) A.urifiction

There are a number of artisanal crafts, predating the rise of alchemy, which demand varying degrees of empirical knowledge. These include the 1

Needham, "The elixir concept". }28

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manufacture of perfumes, glass, ceramics, inks, pigments and dyes. More relevant to our subject were the arts used by jewellers and smiths to imitate genuine substances such as gold, silver, gems and pearls. The term "aurifiction" applies to methods used for simulating gold. This could be achieved by "diluting" gold with other metals; by making gold-like alloys with copper, tin, zinc, nickel, etc.; by the surface-enrichment of such mixtures containing gold; by amalgamation gilding; or by the deposition of surface films of appropriate tints produced by exposure of the metal to the vapours of sulphur, mercury or arsenic or volatile compounds containing these elements. The deception of the client was not essential, for he might be quite content with an artifact of gold-like appearance. The artisan, however, would have been well aware that his product would not stand up to the ancient test of cupellation. In this test gold (or silver), with or without other metals, is heated with lead in a vessel made of bone-ash, a crucible or a shallow hearth, set in an oxidizing furnace with a reverbatory heat-flow. Lead monoxide (litharge) is formed, as well as the oxides of any base metals, and these separate with any other impurities, soaking into the porous ash and being blown off by the fumes, until a cake or globule of the precious metal remains. Cupellation does not separate gold and silver, but this could be achieved by the ancient method known as "dry parting" or "cementation". This process could also be used for the surface enrichment of a gold-containing alloy by the withdrawal of copper and silver from the external layers, so that an object thus treated would give a positive result to the touchstone, as the Hellenistic artisans certainly knew.

Aurifaction

Aurifaction, the attempt to produce gold (or silver) from base metals is commonly regarded as synonymous with alchemy. It is not possible here to discuss in any depth the ideas that led to the growth of alchemical thought. Some attempt must be made, however, to mention the most important concepts. Aristotle, though not an alchemist, formulated theories that are widely thought to be the basis of much alchemical thought. As is well known he taught that all substances are composed of four elements:fire,air, water and earth, which are distinguished from one another by their "qualities", these being the fluid (or moist), the dry, the hot and the cold. Each element possesses two of these, as follows: Fire - hot and dry Air - hot and fluid Water - cold and fluid Earth - cold and dry.

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None of the four elements is unchangeable; they pass into one another through the medium of that quality which they possess in common; thus fire can become air through the medium of heat; air can become water through the medium of fluidity, and so on. Since each element can be transformed into any of the others, it follows that any kind of substance can be transformed into any other kind by so treating it that the proportions of its elements are changed to accord with the proportions of the elements in the other substance. The many hundreds of recipes given by the alchemists nearly all revert to this basic concept. One or more substances were subjected to chemical treatments such as roasting, amalgamation or calcination, and a substance known as the "philosopher's stone" or the "elixir" was applied to the resultant product. The preparation of this substance and its application to the materials to be transmuted could also involve elaborate chemical processing. Sometimes the operations were carried out under auspicious planetary influences. If everything had been carried out correctly, then pure gold would be produced. Macrobiotics

The main ideas of macrobiotics include: (a) The conviction of the possibility of a chemically induced longevity..., (b) hope in a similar conservation of youth (c) speculation on what the achievement of a perfect balance of qualities might be able to accomplish, (d) the enlargement of the life-extension idea to life-donation or artificial generation systems, and (e) the uninhibited application of elixir chemicals in the medical treatment of diseases.2 Attempts to transmute base materials into gold, or to prolong life by chemical means, were, of course, bound to fail. Other early scientific work was also often based upon false premises. Valuable work was done in pneumatics, for example, before it was realized that aerostatic effects are caused by the weight of air. It is a little strange, therefore, that alchemists have been singled out for more than their fair share of ridicule, since many of them were serious seekers after truth, using the best theoretical assumptions that were known in their time. The ridicule may be partly explained by the fact that over the centuries many charlatans professed to be alchemists with the sole intention of deluding the unwary and so enriching themselves. Nevertheless, even serious alchemists must share part of the blame for the dubious status of their profession. They were either ignorant of, or chose to ignore, the assaying methods such as cupellation that were well known to the artisans. In other fields, for example machine technology, there was fruitful co-operation between scientists and craftsmen; if a 2

Ibid., 258-9.

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scientist ignored the advice of craftsmen then the machines he designed simply would not work. There is no simple answer to the failure of alchemists to seek practical advice. Despite their refusal to put their results to well-tried testing procedures, the alchemists made an immense contribution to the development of modern chemistry and it is mainly this aspect of their work that has engaged the attention of historians of science. The esoteric side of alchemy, however, has an important place in the development of man's religious, philosophical and psychological thinking, and merits more serious attention than it has often received. According to T. Burckhardt,3 the goal of alchemy "is the ripening, 'transmutation', or rebirth of the soul of the artist himself... In fact alchemy may be called the art of the transmutation of the soul". It is not necessary to believe, with Burckhardt, Husayn Nasr4 and others, that this essentially mystical side of the subject is the only "true" alchemy. It is clear that the subject cannot be properly investigated without taking this aspect of it into account. Unfortunately, the very nature of an occult system precludes any clear, rational presentation of its tenets. Alchemistic authors often imply that they preserve the secrets of alchemy by the use of allegory and simile in order to keep unqualified persons at a distance. Another technique was the dispersion of esoteric instruction among technical writings, so that only the initiated would grasp the meaning of the apparently irrelevant interpolated passages. Moreover, it was held that this true alchemy could only be passed on from a master to a pupil, not learned from books. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a satisfactory definition of the term "alchemy", in all its aspects, has not yet been made. ALCHEMICAL LITERATURE

Although the surviving literature is fragmentary and often of unknown authorship, it is clear that in the West alchemy came into being in Hellenistic Egypt. Artisanal practices, including the simulation of gold and other precious materials, were undoubtedly older than alchemy proper, and were one of the stimuli that led to the rise of alchemy. These practices are described in two surviving documents, usually identified as the Stockholm5 and Leiden6 manuscripts, dated to the third Christian century. About 200 BC Bolus of Mendes knew of certain techniques of colouring, and such 3 5 6

4 Alchemy-Science of the Cosmos\ 23. Islamic Science, ch. 9. Now in Victoria Museum, Uppsala. Trans, with comm. O. Lagercrantz, Papyrus Graecus Holmiensisy Uppsala, 1913. Preserved in University Library, Leiden. Trans, and anal. M. Berthelot, Collection desanciensalchimistes grecsy Paris, 1887-8.

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techniques, combined with neo-Platonic, Gnostic, Hermetic and Stoic ideas, with the underlying Aristotelian philosophy, helped alchemy to establish itself in Egypt. The writings of the Hellenistic alchemists themselves have survived only in a number of fragmentary manuscripts, many of which carry the names of legendary or celebrated figures such as Hermes, Isis, Moses, Ostanes (a legendary Persian sage) and Cleopatra. One or two others may not be pseudonyms: Mary the Jewess seems to have been a real person, and a great discoverer in practical science (the bain-marie is named after her). The oldest of these writings is probably the pseudo-Democritus, so called because it is attributed to the Greek philosopher Democritus, born about 470 BC. The pseudo-Democritus can be dated to the first century AD or to the last decades of the first century BC. The other writings were composed later — Comerius, the pseudo-Cleopatra and Mary the Jewess in the second century AD, others up to the end of the fourth century. An important figure was Zosimus of Panopolis who around AD 300 wrote an encyclopaedia of alchemy, parts of which have survived. A considerable number of these Greek writings were translated into Arabic, but we have no exact information about the times and places of these translations. It seems, however, that the first were made towards the close of the second/eighth century, and that the greater part came to the Arabs in the third/ninth century. It is possible that in some cases there may have been intermediary translations into Syriac, but it is not clear whether Hunayn b. Ishaq and his pupils took part in these translations. It is certain that the Arabs knew far more of the Greek pseudographic writers than have survived in Greek. Ibn al-Nadlm gives a long list of pseudographic authors,7 and there are many mentions of them throughout the works of Arab alchemists. Only when many more of the Arabic alchemical writings have been edited and studied may it be possible to identify at least some of the Hellenistic sources. We must be careful, however, not to assume that the only sources of Arabic alchemy were Greek, simply because the written transmissions were from the Greek pseudographs. Needham has shown that Arabic alchemy contains elements that were absent from Greek alchemy but an essential feature of its Chinese counterpart. He points out that "the whole course of Hellenistic proto-chemistry was primarily metallurgical . . ., while Arabic joined with Chinese alchemy in the profoundly medical nature of its pre-occupations".8 Macrobiotic ideas appear in the Jabirian writings and in the works of other Arab alchemical writers, and it seems almost certain that they were imported from China, where the characteristic form of Chinese alchemy had existed since the 7

Fihrist, trans. Dodge, 849-50.

8

"The elixir concept", 259.

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fourth century BC. NO translations of Chinese works are known from the early centuries of Islam, but the two cultures had commercial relations from the second/eighth century onwards and non-literary transmissions could have occurred in alchemical matters as we know they did in other fields; for example, in paper-making and in techniques of siege-warfare. For the beginnings of Arabic alchemy we have only reports of a legendary nature in the works of later alchemists. For example, the Umayyad prince Khalid b. Yazid is said to have ordered Egyptian scholars to translate Greek and Coptic works on alchemy, medicine and astronomy into Arabic, and to have learned alchemy from a Byzantine monk by the name of Maryanos. While it is not improbable that Khalid took an interest in scientific subjects, there is no evidence to suggest that he was a founder of Arabic alchemy. Although there may have been other early Arab scholars who were interested in the subject, undoubtedly the most important name in early Arabic alchemy was that of Jabir b. Hayyan, long familiar to Western readers under the name of Geber, the medieval rendering of the Arabic word. Indeed, not only are the writings attributed to Jabir the earliest Arabic alchemical works to have survived, but they represent a peak of perfection that was never surpassed by later Arab scholars. As with other Arab scientists, Jabir was a polymath who concerned himself with all known branches of learning. He says that he wrote 300 books on philosophy, 1,300 books on mechanical devices and war-machines, etc. There were also hundreds of books on alchemy. A list of Jabir's works, together with the locations of surviving manuscripts, is given by P. Kraus9 and, with additions, by F. Sezgin.10 His writings are also listed by Ibn alNadim.11 According to the autobiographical statements to be found in Jabir's writings, his name was Abu Musa Jabir b. Hayyan and he is said to have lived from 103/721 until about 200/815. He studied under the imam Jacfar al-Sadiq and was also in favour with the Barmakids. The attribution of these writings to a single personage, Jabir b. Hayyan, and even the existence of such a man, have been subjected to close scrutiny by scholars since the end of the thirteenth/nineteenth century. Indeed, even Ibn al-Nadlm12 said that he spoke to a group of scholars who questioned Jabir's existence, although he himself accepted his historicity. A number of modern scholars, including M. Berthelot, E. O. von Lippmann, E. J. Holmyard, J. Ruska and others attempted to resolve the problem without coming to any definite conclusions.13 In 1942-3 Paul Kraus published his monumental work on Jabir,14 in which he set forth detailed arguments to 9 12 14

l0 n Jabir b. Hayyan, i, 3-166. GAS, iv, 231—69. Fihrist, trans. Dodge, 855-62. Ibid., 855. 13 For a discussion of these scholars' contribution to this debate, see GAS, iv, 1758". Jabir b. Hayyan, 1, 1943; 11, 1942.

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show that Jabir was a legendary personage and that the Jabirian corpus was composed by a group of Ismacili scholars at the close of the third/ninth century and in the early decades of the fourth/tenth century. More recently Fuat Sezgin15 has subjected the problem to close analysis and attempted a detailed refutation of Kraus's conclusions. He takes the view that the Jabirian writings are all attributable to Jabir b. Hayyan. An intermediate view is taken by Husayn Nasr,16 who accepts the historicity of Jabir and his authorship of part of the corpus, to which followers of Ismaciliyyah doctrines added many treatises of their own. Clearly, there is no possibility here of discussing these widely differing opinions or offering any new conclusions. For those interested in investigating the matter further, there is no alternative to a close examination of the literature, particularly the writings of Kraus and Sezgin.17 It must suffice to say that the present writer does not believe that Kraus's main conclusions have been undermined, but that Jabir b. Hayyan was a historical personage who may have initiated the study of alchemy in Islam. It is unlikely, however, that any of the Jabirian writings as they now stand were composed in the second/eighth century. Some of these writings are full-length books while others, though referred to as "books", are short treatises of only a few sheets. These writings are given individually or in groups by Ibn al-Nadlm and they have been tentatively given the following chronology: Kitab al-Kahmah ("Book of Mercy"), second half of the third/ninth century; the "112 books" and the "70 books", end of the third/ninth century; Kutub al-Mawa^in ("Books of the Balances"), beginning of the fourth/tenth century; the "500 books", around 432/1040. In the following discussion the name "Jabir" is used as a convenience for all the anonymous authors of these books. The Jabirian corpus contains in its various parts virtually all that was known of alchemy at the time and indeed very little was added to this sum of knowledge later, except some practical advances in the way of new equipment and processes. All that can be mentioned here are some of the ideas that distinguish Jabir from his Hellenistic predecessors. Thefirstof these is the quicksilver/sulphur theory. In quicksilver water and earth are present, sulphur contains fire and air and thus these substances together hold the four elements. When the particles of sulphur and quicksilver are mixed and enter into a close compound, the heat generates a process of maturation and cooking which results in the various kinds of metals. If the quicksilver is clean and the sulphur pure, if the quantities stand in ideal relation to one another and if the heat has the right degree, pure gold comes into being. If before maturation coldness enters, then silver is produced; if 15

Gs4.S, iv, 13 2—269.

17

Details of the various works will be found in Ullmann, Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 198-200.

16

Islamic Science, 199.

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dryness, then red copper. The more disturbing factors enter, the more lowgrade the metals become. The alchemist, then, exerts himself to imitate nature. He tries to discover how much quicksilver and how much sulphur are contained in gold and how great the heat must be to bring about the maturation process. If he succeeds in establishing these conditions, he is able to synthesize gold. It should perhaps be added that "quicksilver" and "sulphur" did not necessarily mean for the alchemist the chemical elements Hg and S, but that by these terms he understood rather the basic principles of fluidity and inflammability. Although the quicksilver/sulphur theory appears for the first time in the Jabirian corpus, it does not differ in essence from the methods used by the Hellenistic alchemists. Two other theories, however, do represent a radical departure from the principles and practices of earlier times. The theory of the balance was a highly speculative One, in which the alchemist attempted to assess the equilibrium of "natures" (heat, dryness, coldness and fluidity) in any given substance. An elaborate system of numerology was used in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet of twenty-eight letters to estimate the proportions of the natures in a substance. The "balance" was determined by giving numerical values to each letter of the alphabet and assigning these values to the letters in the name of the substance, whereupon the proportions of the natures in the substance could be calculated. These being known, according to the theory they could then be adjusted to produce another substance, usually gold, whose balance was known. This system, of which the foregoing is only an outline, undoubtedly had esoteric significance. The idea of an elixir that could be used as a medicine or as a life-giving force appears for the first time in the West in the writings of Jabir. As mentioned earlier, the idea was probably diffused from China. The elixir, which could be prepared from animal, vegetable or mineral substances, could be used to prolong life or given as a medicine to desperately sick people. Even more startling is the so-called Science of Generation, concerned with the artificial asexual generation of plants, animals and even men, as well as the production of ores and minerals in Nature and in the laboratory, including the generation of the noble metals from the base. The transmutation of base metals into gold by means of an elixir is therefore but one specialized application of the theory. The other great name of early Arabic alchemy is that of Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya3 al-RazI.18 He is, of course, justly famous as a medical practitioner and teacher, but he also turned his attention to 18

See below, ch. 21.

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philosophy, logic, metaphysics, poetry, music and alchemy. Assuming that the dates of the composition of the Jabirian corpus are correct, he was a contemporary of the later Jabirian writers, but his views are very different from theirs. He wrote a number of alchemical works. He himself gives a list of twelve of his books, some of which have survived in manuscripts, although they have yet to be properly studied. His major work on the subject, not included in the twelve books, is Kitab al-Asrar ("The Book of Secrets") to which he added a short supplementary book called Kitab Sirr al-asrar ("The Book of the Secret of Secrets"). Ruska's annotated translation is given the latter title, but this is an error, since it is in fact the Book of Secrets.

From the Book of Secrets we receive the impression of a powerful mind much more interested in practical chemistry than in theoretical alchemy. Al-Razi did not accept Jabir's theory of the "balance", does not discuss the elixir of life and does not speculate about the esoteric meaning of alchemy. He believed, with the Hellenistic writers, that all substances are composed of the four "elements" and that therefore the transmutation of metals was possible. The object of alchemy was to effect this transmutation by means of elixirs, and also to "improve" valueless stones such as quartz and even glass with similar elixirs and so convert them into emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and the like. Al-Razi followed Jabir in assuming that the proximate constituents of metals were mercury and sulphur, but sometimes suggests a third constituent of a salty nature - an idea that occurs very frequently in later alchemical literature. Elixirs were of varying powers, ranging from those which could convert only 100 times their own weight of base metal into gold to those that were effective 20,000 times. The Secret of Secrets foreshadows a laboratory manual and deals with substances, equipment and processes. Al-Razi in fact brought about a revolution in alchemy by reversing the relative importance of experiment and speculation. From the lists he gives of materials and apparatus it is evident that his own laboratory was very well equipped. It had vessels of all kinds, lamps and braziers, furnaces called athanors, smelting-furnaces, many kinds of tools, sand-baths, water-baths, filters of hair-cloth and linen, alembics, aludels, funnels, cucurbits and pestles and mortars. In addition, al-Razi gives details, often with illustrations, of the construction of more complicated pieces of equipment from these and other units. His store-cupboard contained not only specimens of all metals then known, but pyrites, malachite, lapis lazuli, gypsum, haematite, turquoise, galena, stibnite, alum, green vitriol, natron, borax, common salt, potash, cinnabar, white lead, red lead, litharge, ferric oxide, cupric oxide, verdigris and vinegar. He drew up a scheme for the classification of all substances

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used in alchemy; here for the first time we meet with the now familiar division of substances into animal, vegetable and mineral. The chemical processes described or mentioned by al-Razi include distillation, calcination, solution, evaporation, crystallization, sublimation, filtration, amalgamation and ceration, the last-named being a process for converting substances into pasty or fusible solids. Most of these operations were used in attempts at transmutation, which according to al-Razi were conducted as follows. First, the substances to be employed had to be purified by distillation, calcination, amalgamation or other appropriate treatment. Having freed the crude materials from their impurities, the next step was to reduce them to an easily fusible condition by means of ceration, which should result in a product that readily melted, without any emission of fumes, when dropped upon a heated metal plate. After ceration, the product was to be further disintegrated by the process of solution, which included dissolving in "sharp waters"; these were not generally acid liquids but alkaline and ammoniacal, though lemon juice and sour milk, which are weakly acidic, were sometimes employed. The solutions of the various substances, suitably chosen for the amount of "bodies", "spirits", etc., they were supposed to possess, were then brought together. The combined solutions were finally subjected to the process of coagulation or solidification, and if the experiment were successful the substance resulting would be an elixir.19 In view of al-Razi's methodical approach and his insistence upon the necessity for practical work, he has been considered, rightly, as one of the main founders of modern chemistry. An important alchemist of the first half of the fourth/tenth century, totally different in his attitudes from al-Razi, was Muhammad b. Umayl alTamimi. A number of his works have survived in manuscripts. Some of his writings are in the form of alchemical poetry. The Kisalat al-Shams ila alhilal("Letter from the Sun to the Crescent Moon"), for example, consists of 448 verses, in which the "sun" represents the elixir and the "moon", mercury. An important work, extant in a number of manuscripts, is Kitab al-Md*al-waraqi wa^l-ard al-najmiyyah ("The Silvery Water and the Starry

Earth"). In the introduction to this work he tells us how he went with a friend to the temple of Buslr, which was known as "Joseph's Prison". Inside they found that the walls and ceiling were covered with inscriptions in hieroglyphics; these, which were a fund of alchemical wisdom, had been inscribed by Hermes. Ibn Umayl al-Tamimi published these in his Kisalat al-Shams..., and provided a commentary on those verses in Kitab al-Maalwaraqi... The latter is an extremely important text, since it is a storehouse of 19

The foregoing outline of al-Razi's methods is a slightly condensed version of Holmyard's description in Alchemy, 86-8.

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alchemical doctrines, particularly those of the ancient, pseudographic authors. Ibn Umayl subjects Jabir's work to occasional polemics and ignores al-Razi completely, as might be expected from a writer who obviously regarded the speculative, esoteric side of alchemy as its most important aspect. Properly speaking, the great scientist, philosopher and physician Ibn Slna20 cannot be considered as an alchemist at all, since in his Kitab a/Shifa0, and elsewhere, he denied the main belief of the alchemists, namely the possibility of transmutation. Moreover, modern research has shown that most of the alchemical works that bear his name were not from his pen. One work that has survived exists only in a Latin translation with the title Liber de animay which appears to date back to around the beginning of the sixth/ twelfth century. Although this is probably a genuine work of Ibn Slna, it appears to have been subjected to alterations and revisions in the Latin version. The book is quite lengthy and deals with the nature, purposes and origins of alchemy and the processes needed for the preparation of the elixir. A number of earlier scholars and pseudographs are cited, including Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Hermes, Maryanos, Jabir b. Hayyan, Dhu DlNun al-Misri, Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya0 al-Razi and Abu Nasr Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Farabi. Another work attributed to Ibn Slna is the Risa/at al-lksir ("Epistle on the Elixir"), which also exists in a Latin translation entitled Avicennae ad Hasen regem epistola de re recta. The work was in the form of a letter from Ibn Slna to AbuDl-Hasan Sahl b. Muhammad al-Sahli and contains nine sections. In his introduction the writer says that he examined the works of the supporters and opponents of alchemy, but since he could not gain a true picture from these writings he formed his own opinions independently. The work includes descriptions of methods for colouring substances, synthesis and the preparation of the elixir. Careful and conscientious descriptions of various processes are given as well as of apparatus that seems to have been invented by the writer. The book in fact is a laboratory manual; Ibn Slna makes the point more than once that he always subjected his hypotheses to experimental tests. Two important works were written in Spain in the latter part of the fourth/tenth century by Maslamah b. Ahmad (d. 396/1005 or 398/1007). Although a native of Cordova he was known as al-Majrlti because of his long residence in Madrid. The works are Kitab Rutbat al-haklm wa-mudkhal al-tacttm ("The Sage's Step and the Entry into Learning"), and Ghayat alhaklm ("The Aim of the Wise"), an astrological work. Al-Majrlti was a 20

See below, ch. 23.

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noted astronomer and his leaning towards the natural sciences is reflected in Kutbat al-hakim, which insists upon a good grounding in mathematics and science for the aspiring alchemist. This should include the study of mathematics in the pages of Euclid and Ptolemy, and of the natural sciences as taught by Aristotle or Apollonius of Tyana. Next the student should practise his hand in operation, his eye in examination, and his mind in reflection over chemical substances and reactions. The chemist should strive to follow Nature, whose servant he is, like the physician. The latter diagnoses the disease and administers a remedy, but it is Nature that acts. The Kutbat al-haklm contains very precise and intelligible instructions for the purification of gold and silver by cupellation and in other ways, serving to show that contemporary alchemy knew the discipline of the laboratory. Also, the author of the book describes an experiment, on the preparation of what is now called mercuric oxide, carried out on a quantitative basis. Very seldom in alchemical literature do we find even the slightest suggestion that pursuing the changes in weight that occur during a chemical reaction might lead to significant results; a procedure that, first methodically applied by Joseph Black in the middle of the twelfth/eighteenth century, has been for 200 years a guiding principle in the science of chemistry. It should be noted that the Kutbat al-haklm was not written until 400/1009 or later, thus at least two years after the death of al-Majrltl. For this reason its author is sometimes called the pseudo-Majriti, but it is possible that in this case, as in so many others, the work was edited and perhaps enlarged after the original author's death. Although alchemical books continued to be written in the Arab world during the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, there were fewer notable authors than in earlier times. Such books as were written were for the most part rearrangements or compendia of earlier works or commentaries on them. One of the last, and also one of the greatest of the medieval Arab alchemists, however, was cIzz al-DIn Aydamir al-Jildaki, an Egyptian, who died in 743/1342 or later. Almost nothing is known of his life, but he tells us that he spent seventeen years on extensive travels, which took him to Iraq, Asia Minor, the Maghrib, the Yemen, the Hijaz, Syria and Egypt, where he ultimately settled. Al-Jildaki represents the mystical and allegorical trend in Arabic alchemy, but there is evidence that he had real experience in practical operations and chemical substances. He wrote a large number of books, many of which have survived in manuscript, although in common with so many Arabic alchemical writings most of them await editing and study. His interests extended to khawass^ i.e. the magical properties of things, and to pharmacology, medicine and astrology, especially the attribution of metals and other substances to the seven

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planets. He often reflects on the parallels between natural and alchemical processes, and he attacks Ibn Sina who denied the possibility of artificial transmutation. He was not a writer of great originality and much of his work consists of commentaries upon the works of earlier writers. The value of his books lies in the great number of quotations that al-Jildaki sawfitto include in them, a value enhanced by the general accuracy with which the quotations are made. In many cases the original works from which the quotations were made are still in existence, and examination of them shows that al-Jildaki was a careful copyist; we may therefore with fair confidence accept as genuine other passages of which no earlier provenance is known. One of his books, the Nihayat al-talab ("The End of the Search") is particularly rich in material as may be judged by the fact that he quotes from, or mentions, no fewer than forty-two works of Jabir and a large number of those of other authors, including Ibn Umayl al-Tamimi, Ibn Sina, al-Majriti, Khalid b. Yazid and Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya3 al-Razi. Another book that would repay study is Kitab al-Burhanfl asrar cilm al-ml^an ("The Book of the Proof in the Secrets of the Science of the Balance"). As its name implies, the book is concerned in part with the theory of the "balance" expounded by Jabir, but it also contains a wide range of valuable information. Al-Jildaki pays particular attention to the classification of animals, plants and minerals. For example, animals were categorized in seven groups: men, earthly demons, birds, wild animals, cattle, water animals and reptiles. Plants are also divided into seven groups, according to their connection with the seven planets, and their use in chemistry is discussed. Minerals are also catalogued, but in a less systematic manner. The Burhan is a very important work since it is virtually a summary of much of the knowledge accumulated in Islam up to the eighth/ fourteenth century. It deals not only with alchemy but also with theology, philosophy, cosmology, physics, astrology and letter-magic. Arabic alchemy did not cease to be studied and practised after the time of al-Jildaki, but continued to have its serious adherents into the present century. We will conclude this brief survey, however, with a few words on the influence of Arabic alchemy on the development of its European counterpart. While early medieval Europe was by no means lacking in skilful artisans such as dyers, painters, glass-makers, goldsmiths and others, there appears to have been no knowledge of alchemy in the West until it was introduced from Islam, a process beginning in the sixth/twelfth century. The greatest centre for the diffusion of Arabic knowledge into Europe was Spain where the southern part of the peninsula was still under Muslim control. It was in Spain in AD 1144 that Robert of Ketton completed the first

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translation of an alchemical work from Arabic into Latin. It was in Toledo, however, that a school of translators rendered large numbers of Arabic scientific works into Latin. Prominent among these translators was Gerard of Cremona (c. 508—83/1114—87). Among alchemical works he translated a book of al-Razi and is also believed to have translated one of the works of Jabir. There were many other translations of alchemical works made at the same period; it is significant that many technical words had no equivalents in Latin and the translators were therefore obliged to supply these words by transliterating directly from Arabic. Such terms then became part of the scientific vocabularies of European languages. Examples in English are: alkali, alchemy, alcohol, athanor (a furnace), elixir, naphtha and many others. The same phenomenon occurs in other sciences and technologies. Although one or two genuine works from the Jabirian corpus were translated into Latin, other works in Latin that carry the name of Geber are without known Arabic originals. It is of course possible that the study of as yet unedited works of the Jabirian writings may reveal a direct connection with the Latin Geber, but this seems to be unlikely. That the "Geber" treatises are based upon Arabic alchemical theory is not questioned, and it seems likely from various turns of phrase that their author knew Arabic. The general style, however, is quite different from that of any known writings of the Jabirian corpus, nor do they contain any typical Jabirian ideas such as the theory of the "balance" and the use of alpha-numerology. These works were probably written by a European scholar, but whatever their origin, they became the principal authorities in early Western alchemy and held that position for several centuries.