Chapter Seven 96 the SURVIVAL of Technology from THE

96 chapter seven

Chapter seven

The Survival of Technology From the Ancient World

Alexandria had been the main commercial centre of Egypt, the terminus of the Indian Ocean trade, and a centre of science and technology, especially alchemy, the study of imitating gold. As well as being able to draw upon a wealth of experience in the doubtful arts of colouring the surface of metals to bamboozle the unwary, alchemy (al-kimiya = [the art of] the black [land] i.e.Egypt) also flourished because glassblowing had devel- oped what we must call laboratory glassware; vessels of blown glass which alone enabled the experimenter to observe the success or failure of his manipulations.

Arabic Alchemists

Alchemy underwent a revival in the Arabic world, especially in the circle known as “The Brethren of Purity”, associated with the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan. It may be that the Islamic world offered a greater variety of mate- rial resources than the Roman Empire, for the scope of Arabic alchemy was eventually to become greater than that of Alexandria. Nor should the importance of contacts through trade, as well as invasions, with Indian & Central Asian technology be forgotten.

Jabir (Geber)

Jabir ibn Hayyan was the most influential chemist of his time and said to have died in 822.1 His works were so influential that they were frequently copied, and added to, over the centuries, so that many works came to be ascribed to Jabir, which may have had little connection with him. The most important chemical treatise of the Middle Ages was the Summa per- fectionis which was supposed to have been written (in Latin) by the Arab

1 Holmyard, E.J. “Jabir ibn Hayyan” Proc.Royal Society of Medicine—History of Medicine Section, 16 (1922–23) 46–57. The Survival of Technology From the Ancient World 97

“Geber”.2 A great deal of ink has been spilt over the authorship of this book, but unfortunately, the mention of any particular chemical, such as saltpetre, by Jabir or “Geber” is no guarantee that it was known to Arabic chemists of the 8th or 9th century. It may well be that it was a later discov- ery and described in a 13th century treatise which was ascribed to the prestigious author of 500 years earlier. Kraus, however, in his exhaustive book on Jabir suggested that “Jabir” was the nom de plume of a group of Ismaili propagandists writing in the 9th–10th centuries and his Arabic works were in fact forgeries. Likewise, the ascription of Jabir’s authorship to any book is no guarantee that he, or in fact any Arab, is the author, especially if it only exists in a Latin version. The first mention of Jabir is in the Fihrist al-uluum or “Catalogue of the Sciences” of Ibn al-Nadim, a librarian of Baghdad (c.988)—which says that “the Adepts claim he was the Supreme Alchemist; after the fall of the Barmakids [the family of viziers] he lived at Kufa…and he practised alchemy -later some one found a mortar with 200 ratl of gold in a por- tico—in which was also found an installation built for the alchemical treatments of dissolution and fixation … but other Scholars say he did not exist...Razi refers to him as his master.”3 Jabir was said to be the author of over a thousand books, but many of these have not survived even in Arabic. Some of Jabir’s recipes were trans- lated by Berthelot; others by Holmyard, but many still remain untranslat- ed.4 Holmyard’s project to edit and translate the works of Jabir never progressed beyond the first part of Volume I which contained 11 Arabic texts.5 Many more texts were edited and published by Kraus. The Book of Natural Properties (Kitab al-hawass) contains many of the recipes and techniques of Antiquity. But there is a group of recipes from this Book which are most interesting—6 Chinese grease for skins, leather, arms; Chinese glues; Chinese & Indian inks; making Silk waterproof; the imita- tion of Tibetan wood etc—because all of these suggest an oriental Source.

2 Ruska J “The history of the Jabir problem” Islamic Culture xi (1937) 303–12. 3 Kraus, P. “Jabir ibn Hayyan” (2 vols), vol. I . “Corpus dʼ écrits Jabiriens” (1943) and vol. II (1942–sic) “Jabir et la science grecque”: Memoires de l' institut d' Égypte, Le Caire, no.45. see I, xlix+ A ratl is approximately a pound (or 450 g). 4 Stapleton, H.E. “Note on the Arabic MSS on Alchemy in the Asafiyah library, Hyde rabad” Archeion, XIV, (1932) 57–61. 5 Holmyard, E.J. “The Arabic works of Jabir” (1928, only vol. I ever published). 6 Kraus, op. cit. II 79.