Alchemy, Arabic Greek

While no book on the subject could be exhaustive, The Bathhouse at Midnight does describe and assess all the literary sources of magic, witchcraft, astrology, alchemy, and divination from Kiev Rus and Imperial Russia, and to some extent Ukraine and Belorussia. Where possible, Ryan identifies the sources of the texts (usually Greek, Arabic, or West European) and makes parallels to other cultures, ranging from classical antiquity to Finnic. He finds that Russia shares most of its magic and divination with the rest of Europe... 

Mahdihassan, S. Alchemy and its fundamental terms in Greek, Arabic, Sanskit and Chinese. Indian J Hist Sci 16, no. 1 (1981) 64-76. 

Mahdihassan, S. Alchemy in the light of its names in Arabic, Sanskrit and Greek. Janus 49 (1960) 79-100. 

Jewish and Islamic scholars were invited to the court of Frederick II in Sicily, and the Knights of St. John opened communication with the East on the island of Rhodes. Due to this influx, Sicily, Spain, and southern France rapidly became multicultural communities. In these areas Jewish and other scholars began to translate Arabic and Greek texts into Latin, which made them available to the rest of Europe. One of the first of these texts was the Book of the Composition of Alchemy, translated into Latin by the Englishman Robert of Chester in 1144. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the art of gold-making was integrated into Western mystical philosophy. 

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 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Emope, Greek and Arab texts were translated from Arabic into Latin, the literary language of Emope. The first translation of an alchemical book from Arabic, The Book of the Composition of Alchemy, was prepared by Robert of Chester in 1144 CE in Spain (31). To the Four Elements, air, water, fire, and earth, Arab alchemists added mercury and sulfur. Paracelsus considered mercury and strlfirr as principles along with salt... 

In the classical era in Europe, the theory and practice of chemistry were pursued mainly by the ancient Greeks, who made many important discoveries in metallurgy in particular and who are also credited with proposing the earliest version of the atomic theory. The Greek chemical tradition declined when mysticism displaced the observational approach in the second century of the Common Era, and subsequently was largely lost in Europe after the fall of Rome in 410 c.E. In the 11th. century c.E., the quasiscience of alchemy returned to Europe via the Arabs, who also introduced Persian, Indian, and Chinese influences. 

Was Chinese alchemy important for the emergence of Western alchemy We do not know for certain, but it may have been. Trade routes and military conquest both involve two-way dissemination of ideas and techniques, and Eastern ideas may have come directly, or filtered through India, into the Greek, Roman, and Arabic worlds. Alexander the Great of Macedon and Greece was pushing eastward in his conquests at about the same time that Chinese alchemy was taking clear shape. 

Alchemy s earliest texts, written in Greek in the first through the third centuries CE, were inherited and taken up by natural philosophers writing in Arabic in the seventh through the tenth centuries. 

It is scarcely surprising that Hermes, whether or not qualified as Trismegistus, was considered as the founder of alchemy as early as Alexandrian times. Greek, which is to say Alexandrian, alchemy certainly disappeared towards the sixth century, but from the seventh and eighth centuries onwards the Arabs took up the thread. 

The Arabs had preserved the writings of Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, and had carried on the beliefs and practices of the early alchemists. They had also added a great deal of their own to alchemy, mainly in terms of chemical discoveries and improvements in apparatus. It was not until the 12th century, with the translations made by Robert of Chester and his followers, that medieval Europe learned of the mysterious science of alchemy. 

The age of the alchemists stretched from approximately the 4th to the 16th century, the Arabs being one of the main groups especially involved in this development. Alchemy, for them, was just another word for chemistry. This word is composed of the Arab word al and the Greek word chyma or metal production. This term shows the importance of metals for people and their wish to extract metals or even to transform non-noble metals into gold. 

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