Volume 75, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Alchemy in the Islamicate World; Edited by Regula Forster

This article provides a study and a descriptive list of alchemical works attributed to Prince Khālid b. Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya, both in prose and poetry, which are found in Arabic manuscripts. This list is compared to medieval biographers’ accounts. A first appendix describes all the manuscripts containing works of Khālid that have been identified so far. A second appendix provides a catalogue of the first verses of all alchemical poems attributed to Khālid, as well as the manuscripts that transmit them.

In the medieval Arabic tradition of the so-called occult sciences, the concept of ramz (symbol, code) has acquired an important role in the way the authors were considering and reading the texts of their predecessors and writing their owns. This term, closely related to the notion of secret, covered various ideas of code: from allegories and allusions to codenames and secret alphabets. Above all, the alchemists made ramz a real topos of their literature. In this paper, we focus on the Rutbat al-ḥakīm of Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (written in 339–342/950–953) and some of its main sources, such as the corpus of texts attributed to Jābir b. Ḥayyān, Ibn Waḥshiyya’s Filāḥa Nabaṭiyya , the Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ and the Risāla Jāmiʿa . We argue that Maslama produced a detailed definition of ramz , conceived a true typology of it, and proposed his own key to reading the alchemical ramz . This rich development is not found in any of the other texts that we have examined here. This observation confirms that Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī, far from being a simple transmitter of Eastern ideas and practices to the Western Arab-Muslim world, was an original and innovative milestone in the transfer of knowledge.

Dialogues and interlocutions in Arabic alchemical writings have already attracted the attention of several researchers. These previous studies mainly focused on dialogues composed in the classical form of alchemical writings, which are interlocutions between a master of alchemy and his disciple. The teaching dialogue between Zosimos and his disciple Theosebeia in the Muṣḥaf al-ṣuwar (“The Book of Pictures”) can be regarded as one of the most influential examples. This paper focuses instead on the diversity of interlocutions that appear in alchemical writings with regard to their literary construction as well as their characters and what they represent. For this research, extracts from different alchemical writings will serve as examples: Mufākharat al-aḥjār (“The Boasting of Stones”) and an excerpt from Kitāb al-Rawḍa (“The Book of the Garden”), both attributed in the manuscripts to the Andalusian mathematician Maslama al-Majrīṭī, in addition to an excerpt from Kitāb al-Aqālīm al-sabʿa (“The Book of the Seven Climes”) ascribed to al-Sīmāwī, and a poem of seventy verses – al-Qaṣīda al-sabʿīniyya – by an unknown author. This paper aims to explore how Arabic-writing alchemists made use of a versatile repertoire of literary and didactic methods to transfer their knowledge of alchemy to the subsequent generations.

Technical terminology and Decknamen represent key hallmarks of the alchemical literature in different traditions. The opacity of this vocabulary makes the reading of alchemical texts difficult and, in order to cope with similar challenges, Byzantine, Syriac and Arabic scholars soon started compiling technical vocabularies. In my paper I shall investigate two (partially overlapping) lexica, which open the BL Syriac alchemical MSS Egerton 709 and Oriental 1593. On the one hand, I will explore the variety of sources used by the anonymous compiler(s) to assemble these useful tools (Byzantine alchemists as well as the Greek medical tradition; Syro-Arabic lexicography). On the other, particular attention will be given to the structure and mise en page of the two lexica, which will be compared with analogous alchemical dictionaries in the Byzantine (e.g. MS Marcianus gr. 299) and Arabic (e.g. MS Gotha 1261) traditions.

Among the hundreds of thousands of fragments of mediaeval manuscripts found in the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue of al-Fusṭāṭ (Old Cairo), a noteworthy corpus of alchemical material preserves alchemical recipes and theoretical works that have the potential to shed light on the oft-debated question of the involvement of Jews in alchemy during the Middle Ages. After an assessment of the status quaestionis , this article offers an introduction to the corpus and to its codicological, palaeographic and linguistic features, and focusses on a discreet number of fragments that were composed by the same alchemist/copyist. The first Judaeo-Arabic edition, Arabic transcription and English translation of a selection of passages from these fragments is presented, together with discussion of their contents. While the first of the fragments is a collection of practical alchemical recipes, the second fragment preserves the Judaeo-Arabic version of a work by the famous alchemist Jābir ibn Ḥayyān that was previously considered lost.

This article examines a little-known and unstudied alchemical treatise, The Epistle on Alchemy ( al-Risāla fī l-ṣināʿa ) attributed to Aristotle, purportedly translated from Syriac into Arabic by the Nestorian bishop ʿAbdīshōʿ bar Brīkhā (d. 1318). In particular, I investigate the Epistle ’s discourse on the concealment and revelation of alchemical knowledge. Like other occult sciences, alchemy was characterised by a marked concern for secrecy and frequently employed codes, or Decknamen , when discussing the “Noble Art.” Yet the author of the Epistle consciously avoids such conventions, choosing instead to disclose its mysteries in an open and accessible manner, while making clear that secrecy would otherwise be necessary were the reader deemed unworthy. By engaging with scholarship in Islamic and Jewish occult science and esotericism, I show that the author of the Epistle navigates the boundaries between concealment and disclosure by framing his treatise as a private exchange between two foundational figures of philosophy and kingship: Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Based on a study of the Epistle ’s sources and genre, I consider it possible that the work was not a translation of any Syriac original but a composition by ʿAbdīshōʿ himself and a product of the Arabic-speaking, Islamicate environment in which he lived.

In recent years, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the social contexts of Islamic manuscripts related to the occult sciences. With regard to manuscripts dealing with Arabic alchemy, however, in-depth studies are still lacking. This article aims at shedding some light on the readers and owners of Arabic alchemical literature, focusing on Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs, a Moroccan alchemist of the twelfth century, and his collection of poems entitled Shudhūr al-dhahab (“The Splinters of Gold”). In the centuries following Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs’s death, his dīwān became a “bestseller” and was copied numerous times in many parts of the Islamicate world. The 94 extant manuscripts bear witness to this incredible success and allow us to take a closer look at the milieus in which this text circulated.

The twelfth-century alchemist Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs is best known for his collection ( dīwān ) of alchemical poems entitled Shudhūr al-dhahab (“The Splinters of Gold”). However, he is also credited with other works, including stanzaic poetry ( muwashshaḥāt ) on alchemy. This paper presents the current state of the scholarship concerning life and works of Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs, and then focuses on three strophic poems attributed to this alchemist. It includes first editions and English translations of all three poems, and argues that at least two of the poems are likely to have been authored by Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs, while one is a literary imitation ( muʿāraḍa ) and therefore probably not a work of Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs himself. Furthermore, the article discusses the literary features of the poems as well as their historical contexts and their – somewhat limited – reception. This also allows us to think of Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs in a less regional Andalusī-Maghribī context, and consider if he perhaps moved east at some point of his life, which would explain the reception history of his poems, both those included in the dīwān and the muwashshaḥāt .

Traditionally prized as much for its poetic artistry as its didactic content, Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs’s (fl. twelfth century) dīwān of alchemical verse, the Shudhūr al-dhahab ( Shards of Gold ), is one of the most important and influential works in the literary canon of Arabic alchemy. Drawing on commentaries by both Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs himself and Aydamir al-Jildakī (d. 743/1342 [?]), the present article explores a core feature of Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs’s allegorical style – one that appears to have captured the attention of his medieval readership – namely his novel use of stock poetic motifs as metaphors for alchemical processes and substances. As well as focusing on the commentators’ theoretical interpretations, the article situates Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs’s deliberate appropriation of pre-Islamic and Nuwāsian motifs in its broader literary context, noting the extent to which it foreshadows similar techniques in the poetic allegories of the thirteenth-century Sufi poets, Ibn ʿArabī and Ibn al-Fāriḍ.

“The Mirror of Wonders” ( Mirʾāt al-ʿajāʾib ) is an illustrated Arabic treatise about a mysterious mirror that displays different alchemical symbols. This work of unsettled authorship, which was composed between the 12th and 16th centuries, has got a rich manuscript tradition with more than 45 extant copies dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries, including translations into Turkish and Persian and various short versions of the text. They prove the remarkable popularity of “The Mirror of Wonders” throughout the Islamicate world, even in modern times. Most manuscripts contain a coloured illustration of the mirror and its symbols, with a large scope of variation in their visual design. The nine alchemical symbols of the mirror are: 1. The two figures embracing each other ( al-shakhṣān al-muʿtaniqān ); 2. The black circle ( al- dāʾira al-sawdāʾ ); 3. The palm of the hand ( al-kaff ); 4. The black raven ( al-ghurāb al-aswad ); 5. The eagle ( al-ʿuqāb ); 6. The sun ( al-shams ); 7. The snake ( al-thuʿbān ); 8. The nine crabs ( al-saraṭānāt al-tisʿa ) with the dog descending into the water ( al-kalb al-nāzil fī l-māʾ ) and 9. The nine circles ( al-dawāʾir al-tisʿa ). This paper presents the manuscript tradition of Mirʾāt al-ʿajāʾib and analyses the diverging imagery of the symbols and their meanings in the different manuscripts.

In the Middle Ages, the recipe was of central importance for the safeguarding and transmission of knowledge. This holds true for the scientific traditions of both the East and the West. Recipes have been transmitted in a multitude of manuscripts, either alone or in combination with other recipes and works. This article presents a collection of recipes for the production of inks that have been handed down in an alchemical collective manuscript. The collection also contains a recipe to ward off the pestilence. This combination of alchemy, healing rituals and ink production is more common than one might think. The question arises whether this is due to pure coincidence or whether such collections reflect a literary tradition?