Other Arabian Alchemists

Among other Arabian alchemists the most celebrated were Avicenna and Rhasis, who are supposed to have lived some time after Geber and to whom, perhaps, the sulphur-mercury theory may have been to some extent due. 

Of the other Arabian alchemists, the most celebrated in the middle ages were Rhasis, Alfarabi, and Avicenna who are supposed to have lived in the 9th and 10th centuries. 

Geber takes for granted that the supreme aim of the science is the removing of imperfections of metals so that they shall become perfect. He accepts the existence of the philosopher s stone and of the elixirs, red and white, that in these elixirs red and white there is no other thing than quicksilver and sulphur, and because all metallic bodies are compounded of quicksilver and sulphur—pure or impure—accidentally (superficially) and not in their first nature, therefore by convenient preparation it is possible to take away such impurity. The natural principles of the metals are three sulphur, arsenic and quicksilver. . . . Sulphur is a fatness of the earth thickened until it be hardened and made dry, and when it is hardened it is called sulphur. . . . Arsenic is a subtle matter like to sulphur therefore it need not be otherwise defined than sulphur. . . . Quicksilver is a viscous water united in the bowels of the earth with white subtle earth until the moist is tempered with the dry. Expressions such as these illustrate how completely the author is dependent upon the conventional chemical philosophy of the Arabian alchemists. 

The four elements are not the same as the substances with the same name that occur on Earth. The primary elements can be combined in any proportion to produce the known variety of homogeneous substances. Whereas the four elements are in constant interaction with each other and hence interconvertible, heavenly bodies do not consist of earthly elements, are immutable, circle the Earth on perfect orbits and consist of quintessence, the fifth heavenly element. The alchemists adopted the four-element theory, which offered the possibility of transmutation of metals. As even the elements can be interconverted the same must be true for metals, which are homogeneous bodies and, although not elements, are made up of the four elements. The Arabian alchemist Ibn Sina (Avicenna), who questioned the transmutation of metals, explained that metals are formed by the combination of sulphur (air - - water) and mercury (fire - - earth), which derive from the four elements. In order to make the theory applicable, not only to metals, but to all substances, Paracelsus added salt as the third element of alchemy. Again, his tria print,a of salt (body), sulphur (soul), and mercury (spirit) are not... 

In the noble metals and in many minerals the elements were believed to be so well combined that heat could not separate them. Other minerals, as sulphur, orpiment, asphalt, etc., when heated in the air are partly broken down, the aerial element, not being so firmly united to the earth, being driven off as vapor and mingling with the particles of the atmosphere. This process was interpreted by the Greek alchemists and their Arabian successors as the separation of the spirit from the body, and such substances as were volatilized or burned with formation of gaseous products—as sulphur, arsenic (sulphides), sal ammoniac, quicksilver—were called spirits, while the metals and minerals which, when heated in the air did not volatilize nor disappear in gaseous products, were called bodies (corpora). 

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