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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 somewhat easier to discern. Here there is little question about the importance of Greek sources. Traditionally Prince Khalid ibn Yazid (d. 7114) 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 likelihood of truth in this story, the strong Greek influence on Islamic alchemy may be further confirmed by frequent references to Alexandrian authors and the general 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 alchemical 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 century. The dialogue form is used in the Turba and the speakers are supposedly the Greek philosophers of antiquity. 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 practical 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 philosopher's stone is also well developed in the Arabic literature. 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-Pythagoreans 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 exhalations 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," "mineral," "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) indicates a special interest in chemically prepared substances of pharmaceutical value.
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