Alchemy in Europe and the Middle East

When Islamic empires expanded into centers of Hellenistic culture in the seventh century, Muslim natural philosophers and physicians inherited the Greek alchemical tradition. From the eighth to the tenth centuries, scholars in intellectual centers like Baghdad synthesized the basic elements of the Greek alchemical tradition. The anonymous editor of the Turba philosophorum (Crowd of philosophers; c. 900), for instance, assembled excerpts from various Greek alchemical authors into a virtual conversation. Alchemists writing in Arabic also elaborated on the Greek theoretical foundation, contributing a number of key concepts to alchemical matter theory and medicine. The word alchemy, a combination of the Arabic definite article al with the Greek word chemeia, or chymeia (likely derived from the word for smelting metals, cheein), represents this fusion of Greek and Arabic scholarship, while continued use of Arabic alchemical terms such as alkalai, alcohol, alembic, and elixir (al-iksir) highlights the legacy of Arabic scholarship.

The translation of Greek alchemical texts into Arabic also underscores a central problem in the history of alchemy: pseudonymous texts. In the first centuries C.E., alchemical texts appeared purportedly authored by figures such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Cleopatra. Because Arabic and later European translators did not identify these pseudonyms as such, these prominent ancient figures entered the alchemical corpus as legitimate alchemical authors. The authorship of Arabic texts has been equally difficult for scholars to decipher. One of the more influential medieval Arabic texts, for instance, contains a dialogue between King Khalid ibn Yazid (c. 660–704) and a Christian hermit living in Jerusalem, Morienus. Although it is unclear whether Khalid and Morienus actually wrote this text, both figures remained prominent personages in the medieval alchemical tradition.

A collection of thousands of texts dating to the eighth and tenth centuries known in Latin as the Corpus Gabirianum and attributed to Jabir ibn Hayaan (c. 721–c. 815) contained fundamental contributions to the medieval Arabic alchemical corpus. Among the innovations of the Corpus was the concept of a tripartite division of all things into soul, spirit, and body, a division that would play a central role in European alchemical thought of the sixteenth century. The Corpus also introduced the sulfur-mercury theory, which its author had adopted from the ninth-century author Balinus (pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana). This variation on Aristotle's forms and the Stoic pneuma stated that all matter was formed by two qualities, sulfur and mercury, the balance of which existed in varying degrees in different metals. Using the elixir (or philosophers' stone) to shift the balance between these two principles, the alchemist could transmute one metal into another. The Corpus also posited that the elixir could be made of plant or animal substances as well as mineral, and that it could be used both as a panacea in medicine and in transmutation. Just as the elixir "cured" base metals of their impurities by transmuting them into silver or gold, so too could it "cure" sick people of their illnesses.

The Persian physician and philosopher Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zachariya al-Razi, known in Latin as Rhazes (c. 865–between 923 and 935) is best known for setting out a systematic summary of the "state of the field" of alchemy. Al-Razi added a third quality, salt, to the sulfur-mercury theory, and divided the chemical world into animal, vegetable, and mineral realms. Al-Razi's texts show that he was clearly a practicing alchemist, describing experiments, apparatus, and ingredients, as well as the standard steps of the "great work" of making the elixir.

Although both al-Razi and the Corpus Gabirianum provided theoretical justifications of the notion of transmutation, not all Arabic-speaking philosophers supported this idea. The physician Abdallah ibn Sina (Latinized as Avicenna; 980–1037) famously inveighed against the possibility of transmutation in his Kitab al-shifa (Book of the remedy), articulating an argument that would prove widely influential in the Latin Middle Ages.