Alchemy Part 5

Several alchemistical treatises, written in Arabic, exist
in manuscript in the National Library at Paris and in the
library of the university of Leiden, and have been reproduced
by Berthelot, with translations, in vol. iii. of La Chimie
au moyen age. They fall into two groups: those in one are
largely composed of compilations from Greek sources, while
those in the other have rather the character of original
compositions. Of the first group the most interesting and
possibly the oldest is the Book of Crates; it is remarkable
for containing some of the signs used for the metals by the
Greek alchemists, and for giving figures of four pieces of
apparatus which closely resemble those depicted in Greek
MSS., the former being never, and the latter rarely, found
in other Arabic MSS. Its concluding words suggest that its
production was due to Khalid ben Yezid (died in 708), who
was a pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus, and according to
the Kitab-al-Fihrist was the first Mussulman writer on
alchemy. The second group consists of a number of treatises
professing to be written by Jaber, celebrated in Latin alchemy
as Geber (q.v..) Internal evidence suggests that they are not
all from the same hand or of the same date, but probably they
are not earlier than the 9th nor later than the 12th century.
The Arabic chroniclers record the names of many other writers
on alchemy, among the most famous being Rhazes and Avicenna.

But the further development of alchemy took place in the West
rather than in the East. With the spread of their empire
to Spain the Arabs took with them their knowledge of Greek
medicine and science, including alchemy, and thence it passed,
strengthened by the infusion of a certain Jewish element, to
the nations of western Europe, through the medium of Latin
translations. The making of these began about the 11th
century, one of the earliest of the translators, Constantinus
Africanus, wrote about 1075, and another, Gerard of Cremona,
lived from 1114 to 1187. The Liber de compositione alchemiae,
which professes to be by Morienus--perhaps the same as the
Marianus who was the teacher of Khalid--was translated by
Robertus Castrensis, who states that he finished the work in
1182, and speaks as if he were making a revelation--``Quid
sit alchemia nondum cognovit vestra Latinitas.'' The earlier
translations, such as the Turba Philosophorum and other
Works printed in collections like the Artis auriferae quam
chemiam vocant (1572), Theatrum chemicum (1602), and
J. J. Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), are
confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but
full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek
alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek
alchemy. They were followed by treatises of a different
character, clearer in matter, more systematic in arrangement,
and reflecting the methods of the scholastic logic; these are
farther from the Greek tradition, for although they contain
sufficient traces of their ultimate Greek ancestry, their
authors do not know the Greeks as masters and cite no Greek
names. So far as they are Latin versions of Arabico-Greek
treatises, they must have been much remodelled in the course
of translation; but there is reason to suppose that many of
them, even when pretending to be translations, are really
original compositions. It is curious that although we possess
a certain number of works on alchemy written in Arabic, and
also many Latin treatises that profess to be translated from
Arabic, yet in no case is the existence known of both the
Arabic and the Latin version. The Arabic works of Jaber, as
contained in MSS. at Paris and Leiden, are quite Aissimiiar
from the Latin works attributed to Geber, and show few if any
traces of the positive chemical knowledge, as of nitric acid
(aqua dissolutiva or fortis) or of the mixture of nitric
and hydrochloric acids known as aqua regis or regia, that
appears in the latter. The treatises attributed to Geber, in
fact, appear to be original works composed not earlier than the
13th century and fathered on Jaber in order to enhance their
authority. If this view be accepted, an entirely new light
is thrown on the achievements of the Arabs in the history of
chemistry. Gibbon asserts that the Greeks were inattentive
either to the use or to the abuse of chemistry (Decline and
Fall, chap. xiii.), and gives the Arabs the credit of the
origin and improvement of the science (chap. lii.).2 But
the chemical knowledge attributed to the Arabs has been so
attributed largely on the basis of the contents of the Latin
Geber, regarded as a translation from the Arabic Jaber. If,
then, those contents do not represent the knowledge of Jaber,
and if the contents of other Latin translations which there
is reason to believe are really made from the Arabic, show
little, if any, advance on the knowledge of the Alexandrian
Greeks, evidently the part played by the Arabs must be less, and
that of the Westerns greater, than Gibbon is prepared to admit.