Alchemy in Islam

Alchemy and chemistry in Islam refers to the study of both traditional alchemy and early practical chemistry (the early chemical investigation of nature in general) by Muslim scientists in the medieval Islamic world. The word alchemy itself was derived from the Arabic word الكيمياء al-kimia.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the focus of alchemical development moved to the Arab Empire and the Islamic civilization. Much more is known about Islamic alchemy as it was better documented; indeed, most of the earlier writings that have come down through the years were preserved as Arabic translations.[1]

The study of alchemy and chemistry often overlapped in the early Islamic world, but later there were disputes between the traditional alchemists and the practical chemists who discredited alchemy. Muslim chemists and alchemists were the first to employ the experimental scientific method (as practised in modern chemistry), while Muslim alchemists also developed theories on the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone and the Takwin (artificial creation of life in the laboratory), like in later medieval European alchemy, though these alchemical theories were rejected by practical Muslim chemists from the 9th century onwards.

The Islamic world was a melting pot for alchemy. Islamic alchemists such as Jabir ibn Hayyan (Latinized as Geber) and the Persian alchemist Razi (Latinized as Rasis or Rhazes) contributed key chemical discoveries, including:

* Distillation apparatus (such as the alembic, still, and retort) which were able to fully purify chemical substances.
* The words elixir, alembic and alcohol are of Arabic origin.
* The muriatic (hydrochloric), sulfuric, nitric and acetic acids.
* Soda and potash.
* Distilled water and purified distilled alcohol.
* Perfumery
* Many more chemical substances and apparatus.
* From the Arabic names of al-natrun and al-qalīy, Latinized into Natrium and Kalium, come the modern symbols for sodium and potassium.
* The discovery that aqua regia, a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, could dissolve the noblest metal, gold, was to fuel the imagination of alchemists for the next millennium.

Islamic philosophers also made great contributions to alchemical hermeticism. The most influential author in this regard was arguably Persian Jabir Ibn Hayyan (جابر بن حيان, Latin Geberus; usually rendered in English as Geber). He analyzed each Aristotelian element in terms of four basic qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness.[2] According to Geber, in each metal two of these qualities were interior and two were exterior. For example, lead was externally cold and dry, while gold was hot and moist. Thus, Jabir theorized, by rearranging the qualities of one metal, a different metal would result.[3] By this reasoning, the search for the philosopher's stone was introduced to Western alchemy.[4][5] Jabir developed an elaborate numerology whereby the root letters of a substance's name in Arabic, when treated with various transformations, held correspondences to the element's physical properties.

The elemental system used in medieval alchemy was developed by Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber). His original system consisted of seven elements, which included the five classical elements (aether, air, earth, fire and water), in addition to two chemical elements representing the metals: sulphur, ‘the stone which burns’, which characterized the principle of combustibility, and mercury, which contained the idealized principle of metallic properties. Shortly thereafter, this evolved into eight elements, with the Arabic concept of the three metallic principles: sulphur giving flammability or combustion, mercury giving volatility and stability, and salt giving solidity.[6]

Muslim alchemists also developed theories on the transmutation of metals, the philosopher's stone and the Takwin (artificial creation of life in the laboratory), like in later medieval European alchemy, though these alchemical theories were rejected by practical Muslim chemists from the 9th century onwards.

An early experimental scientific method for chemistry began emerging among early Muslim chemists. The first and most influential was the 9th century chemist, Geber (Jabir ibn Hayyan), who is "considered by many to be the father of chemistry",[7][8][9][10] for introducing:

* The experimental method; apparatus such as the alembic, still, and retort; and chemical processes such as liquefaction, purification, oxidisation and evaporation.[10]
* Crystallisation.[7]
* The chemical process of filtration.[11]
* Pure distillation[11] (impure distillation methods were known to the Babylonians, Greeks and Egyptians since ancient times, but Geber was the first to introduce distillation apparatus and techniques which were able to fully purify chemical substances).
* The distillation and production of numerous chemical substances.

Jabir clearly recognized and proclaimed the importance of experimentation:

"The first essential in chemistry is that you should perform practical work and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain the least degree of mastery."[12]

The historian of chemistry Erick John Holmyard gives credit to Jabir for developing alchemy into an experimental science and he writes that Jabir's importance to the history of chemistry is equal to that of Robert Boyle and Antoine Lavoisier.[13] The historian Paul Kraus, who had studied most of Jabir's extant works in Arabic and Latin, summarized the importance of Jabir ibn Hayyan to the history of chemistry by comparing his experimental and systematic works in chemistry with that of the allegorical and unintelligble works of the ancient Greek alchemists:[14]

“To form an idea of the historical place of Jabir’s alchemy and to tackle the problem of its sources, it is advisable to compare it with what remains to us of the alchemical literature in the Greek language. One knows in which miserable state this literature reached us. Collected by Byzantine scientists from the tenth century, the corpus of the Greek alchemists is a cluster of incoherent fragments, going back to all the times since the third century until the end of the Middle Ages.”

“The efforts of Berthelot and Ruelle to put a little order in this mass of literature led only to poor results, and the later researchers, among them in particular Mrs. Hammer-Jensen, Tannery, Lagercrantz , von Lippmann, Reitzenstein, Ruska, Bidez, Festugiere and others, could make clear only few points of detail…

The study of the Greek alchemists is not very encouraging. An even surface examination of the Greek texts shows that a very small part only was organized according to true experiments of laboratory: even the supposedly technical writings, in the state where we find them today, are unintelligible nonsense which refuses any interpretation.

It is different with Jabir’s alchemy. The relatively clear description of the processes and the alchemical apparatuses, the methodical classification of the substances, mark an experimental spirit which is extremely far away from the weird and odd esotericism of the Greek texts. The theory on which Jabir supports his operations is one of clearness and of an impressive unity. More than with the other Arab authors, one notes with him a balance between theoretical teaching and practical teaching, between the `ilm and the `amal. In vain one would seek in the Greek texts a work as systematic as that which is presented for example in the Book of Seventy.”

Jabir's teacher, Ja'far al-Sadiq, refuted Aristotle's theory of the four classical elements and discovered that each one is made up of different chemical elements:

"I wonder how a man like Aristotle could say that in the world there are only four elements - Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. The Earth is not an element. It contains many elements. Each metal, which is in the earth, is an element."[15]

Al-Sadiq also developed a particle theory, which he described as follows:

"The universe was born out of a tiny particle, which had two opposite poles. That particle produced an atom. In this way matter came into being. Then the matter diversified. This diversification was caused by the density or rarity of the atoms."[15]

Al-Sadiq also wrote a theory on the opacity and transparency of materials. He stated that materials which are solid and absorbent are opaque, and materials which are solid and repellent are more or less transparent. He also stated that opaque materials absorb heat.[15]

Al-Kindi, who was a chemist and an opponent of alchemy, was the first to refute the study of traditional alchemy and the theory of the transmutation of metals into more precious metals such as gold or silver.[16] Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī,[17] Avicenna[18] and Ibn Khaldun were also opponents of alchemy who refuted the theory of the transmutation of metals.

Another influential Muslim chemist was al-Razi (Rhazes), who in his Doubts about Galen, was the first to prove both Aristotle's theory of classical elements and Galen's theory of humorism wrong using an experimental method. He carried out an experiment which would upset these theories by inserting a liquid with a different temperature into a body resulting in an increase or decrease of bodily heat, which resembled the temperature of that particular fluid. Al-Razi noted particularly that a warm drink would heat up the body to a degree much higher than its own natural temperature, thus the drink would trigger a response from the body, rather than transferring only its own warmth or coldness to it. Al-Razi's chemical experiments further suggested other qualities of matter, such as "oiliness" and "sulfurousness", or inflammability and salinity, which were not readily explained by the traditional fire, water, earth and air division of elements.[19] Al-Razi was also the first to:

* Distill petroleum.
* Invent kerosene and kerosene lamps.
* Invent soap bars and modern recipes for soap.
* Produce antiseptics.
* Develop numerous chemical processes such as sublimation.

In the 13th century Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī stated an early version of the law of conservation of mass, noting that a body of matter is able to change, but is not able to disappear.[20]

From the 12th century, the writings of Jabir, al-Kindi, al-Razi and Avicenna became widely known in Europe during the Arabic-Latin translation movement and later through the Latin writings of a pseudo-Geber, an anonymous alchemist born in 14th century Spain, who translated more of Jabir's books into Latin and wrote some of his own books under the pen name of "Geber".