Al-Razi ‘Rhazes

Al-Razi (Rhazes, 854-925) was a Persian who studied in Baghdad. Al-Razi wrote extensively on medicine, philosophy, astronomy, and alchemy, but he was primarily a physician. Al-Razi was less mystical than his contemporary alchemists and classified chemicals by their origin. According to Al-Razi, chemicals came from either animals, plants, and minerals or were derived from other chemicals. Al-Razi wrote The Comprehensive Book, which was an enormous medical encyclopedia that synthesized medical practices of ancient Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, and Persians. Al-Razi was the first person known to describe the disease smallpox. Most of his alchemical writings have been lost, but Al-Razi believed in the atomic nature of matter. Al-Razi took a systematic approach to science and rejected the idea of divine intervention. His rational methods and descriptions were more consistent with modern science than most individuals of his time. Ali al Husayn ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) was another Persian physician whose voluminous works, including The... 

In fact the debate over organic products was not new in the thirteenth-century West. A tenth-century Arabic treatise, the Md al-waraqT of Muhammed Ibn Umayl, attacked alchemists who, like the polymath Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-RazI ( Rhazes to the Latins), recommended such animal ingredients as... 

Arabic alchemy was unknown in the west until the eleventh century when the first translations from Arabic into Latin were made. Two Arab alchemists were especially well known and widely read Jabir ibn Hayyan, known to Europeans as Geber, and Abu Bakr ibn Zakariyya al-Razi, known as Rhazes. Of more than 2,000 pieces of writing attributed to Jabir, most were compiled by a Muslim religious sect called the Faithful Brethren or Brethren of Purity after he died. The works are written in different styles, which would indicate that they were penned by different authors. The compilation was completed around the year 1000, more than a hundred years after Jabir died. However, it has been established that the work translated into Latin under the title Summa Perfectionis was based on translations of Jabir s writing. Thus, although little is known about his life, we know something about the role Jabir played in the evolution of alchemical theory. 

Plato s Timaeus, which gave medieval scholars an introduction to matter theory. Known to the Latin scholars as Geber, Jabir ibn Hayyan authored alchemical works that were translated from Arabic during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as were the medical and alchemical works of Al-Razi (or Rhazes, in Europe). Commentaries on Aristotle by Avicenna, Alpetragius, and Averroes led to a huge interest in Aristotle s actual work, so that important works like the Physics, Meteorologica, and De Animalibus were found and translated into Latin by the end of the thirteenth century. 

Rhazes al-Razi (Persia) Pills with Psyllium seed... 

Phny the Elder, Pedanius Dioskurides De materia medica, 77 AD) and a little later, the most important gynaecologist of ancient times, Soranus of Ephesus On Midwifery and the Diseases of Women, 100 AD), already wrote about contraception and abortion. Reference thereof can also be found in the thriving Arabic medicine of the 10th century, as, for example, in works by Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi (Rhazes, Quintessence of Experience), Ah ibn al-Abbas al-Majusi (Haly Abbas, Royal Book) and Abu Ah al-Husain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina (Avicenna, Canon of Medicine). 

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