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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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ISLAMIC ALCHEMY

Similarities between Chinese and Indian alchemy
have long led to speculations regarding the possible
transmission of common concepts. To date, however,
few facts have come to light to substantiate these
speculations. The origins of Islamic alchemy are some-
what easier to discern. Here there is little question
about the importance of Greek sources. Traditionally
Prince Khalid ibn Yazid (d. 704) was the first Muslim
convert to alchemy and it is significant that his teacher
was said to be one Morienos, a pupil of the legendary
Stephanos of Alexandria. Although there is little likeli-
hood of truth in this story, the strong Greek influence
on Islamic alchemy may be further confirmed by fre-
quent references to Alexandrian authors and the gen-
eral use of Greek philosophical concepts. Translations
were made into Arabic at learned centers throughout
the Near East not only of the works of such major
figures as Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy, but also of
Zosimos, Bolos Democritos, and Stephanos. Among
these centers the old Sassanian academy at Jundi-
Shapur played a role. Similarly a group of Sabians at
Harran were influential in transmitting Indian alchemi-
cal and astrological thought into the Islamic tradition.

The ascription of alchemical works to earlier authors
was as common to Islamic authors as it had been to
their Greek predecessors. The short alchemical classic,
the “Emerald Table,” was said to have been written
by Hermes Trismegistus, but the earliest surviving
version is in an early ninth-century Arabic text ascribed
to the first-century (A.D.) magician, Apollonios of
Tyana. A similar problem exists in regard to the Turba
philosophorum.
This exists only in Latin, but it has been
shown by E. J. Holmyard and J. Ruska to have been
composed originally in Arabic early in the tenth cen-
tury. The dialogue form is used in the Turba and the
speakers are supposedly the Greek philosophers of an-
tiquity. Islamic alchemy did not confine itself to Greek
sages and gods alone in this regard. The eighth-century
scholar, Jabir-ibn-Hayyan, probably authored only a
few works on alchemy. However, some two thousand
titles are ascribed to him. The great bulk of these seem
to derive from members of the Isma'ilya sect, the
Brotherhood of Purity, and they date from the ninth
and the tenth centuries.

Islamic alchemy is characterized by both the practi-
cal and the mystical elements seen in the earlier Greek
texts. There are frequent warnings that the information
being revealed is for the initiated alone and there is
a continued use of the allegorical approach which had
become common in late Greek works. The religious
nature of the art is emphasized and the predominant
vitalism favored by alchemical authors may be seen
in discussions of the generation of metals, and in the
sexual interpretation of fundamental stages of the great
work. As in the Alexandrian texts the progress of the
operator may be followed through the now standard
sequence of color changes. The concept of the philoso-
pher's stone is also well developed in the Arabic litera-


030

ture. This stone allegedly provided a substance which
brought about the rapid transmutation of base metals
to gold. It derived from the earlier concept of special
elixirs which might cure illnesses in man and which
in an analogous fashion might perfect—or cure—
imperfect metals in inanimate nature.

Aristotelian element theory is commonly employed
in the Arabic texts, but in addition the Jabirian works
employed the Sulphur-Mercury theory of the metals.
This concept suggests that all metals are composed of
different proportions of a sophic sulphur and a sophic
mercury. While there was general agreement that these
two substances have a resemblance to common sulphur
and mercury, it was asserted that they were much
purer than anything that could be produced in the
laboratory. A quantitative relationship between the
two was implied, but the mathematical relationship
expressed in these texts may be most easily related to
the number mysticism favored by the Neo-Pythago-
reans and Eastern mystics. Although the Sulphur-
Mercury theory appears first in this literature, it seems
to be a modification of the concept of the two exhala-
tions within the earth that lead to the formation of
minerals and metals. This concept is discussed in the
fourth book of Aristotle's Meteorologica.

In the Arabic literature the reader finds an emphasis
on medical chemistry for the first time outside of the
Far East and India. The work of the physician al-Razi
(Rhazes, 860-925) is decidedly practical in nature.
Although he accepted the truth of transmutation and
discussed elixirs of varying powers, in the Book of the
Secret of Secrets
Razi spoke at length of chemical
equipment and he described in detail the laboratory
operations requisite for the chemist. In addition he
described a large number of laboratory reagents and
classified them into the categories of “animal,” “min-
eral,” “vegetable,” and “derivative.” Chemical texts
continued to employ the first three of these as a basic
scheme for arrangement until well into the eighteenth
century. Razi's interest in medicine and practical
chemistry influenced later Islamic work in medical
chemistry. The work of ibn-Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037)
and Abu Mansur Muwaffak (late tenth century) indi-
cates a special interest in chemically prepared sub-
stances of pharmaceutical value.