Geber pseudo

Jabir ibn Hayyan.The Summa Perfectionis of pseudo-Geber a critical edition, translation and study by William R. Newman. Edited by William Royall Newman. Leiden, New York Brill, 1991. iv, 785 p. 

Sal ammoniac was probably first introduced from Persia (56). In the Invention of Verity, or Perfection which has been attributed to Pseudo-Geber, the preparation of sal ammoniac from human urine, perspiration, common salt, and soot of woods is described (24, 25). 

Berlin, 1929, pp. 60-9 Chapter on Pseudo-Geber by Julius Ruska. 

The work of Theophilus the Monk, as he is called to distinguish him from the early Greek alchemist Theophilus, is very notable among medieval writings for the clear and exact descriptions of the many processes which he describes. As a source of specific information on many technical chemical operations, it has no parallel until the pseudo-Geber at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and in clearness and definiteness it is not excelled by him. 

It was, however, to take time before the new impulse to science was to be perceived in new contributions to chemical thought, unless indeed we may attribute to this influence the work of the unknown author who chose to write under the name of Geber and thus conceal his identity. To distinguish him from the Arabian alchemist, Djaber, he is generally alluded to as pseudo-Geber. 

It is not necessary to claim for the unknown writer of the pseudo-Geber works any original contributions either to the development of chemical philosophy or to advances in chemical practice, in order to explain the great influence which he exerted on his successors for two or three centuries. The fact that he presented to his world a manual of the general chemical practice of his time, so clear and concise as almost to make an epoch in chemical literature is sufficient to account for the great stimulus which he exerted. Indeed it is not too much to assert that, as a manual and guide to the ordinary operations of chemistry—distillation, sublimations and furnace operations generally—and to many accessory operations with metals, no later publication is known which rivals his before the sixteenth century. 

As to the personality of the pseudo-Geber we know nothing. Petrus Bonus, erudite Italian writer on alchemy of 1330, the earliest writer to quote Geber extensively, calls him Geber Hispanus and there is no reason for supposing that he is not right in it. The facts that he draws upon... 

He cites authorities profusely, and this is of importance from the fact that Petrus Bonus seems to have been a writer whose personality and date are generally accepted as genuine. The work bears all the character of an earnest and honest treatise. Authors whom he cites, he cites very frequently. Thus the works of (pseudo-) Geber,written probably about 1300, are very often quoted, and apparently this is the latest authority he knows. There is no citation in his lengthy work, which is confined strictly to alchemy, of any treatise on this subject by Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Arnaldus of Villanova nor Raymond Lullus. It is impossible that he should have cited Lullus in 1330, because, as we have seen, this pseudo-Lullus literature is certainly none of it earlier, and probably all of it considerably later. 

The following direction for making strong water to dissolve all metals is more specific than that given by the pseudo-Geber, but essentially the same process ... 

Porta published in 1608 at Rome a work on distillation, its methods, apparatus and applications, which is of interest as giving a more comprehensive view of the applications of distillation in the sixteenth century than is found in any other work of the period. Methods and apparatus for distillation had been described from very early times, by Zosimus, pseudo-Geber, Brunschwylc, Biringuccio, Agricola and many others for particular applications. 

On medieval Latin alchemy, see Holmyard, Alchemy, 105-52. See also Bernhard Dietrich Haage, Alchemie im Mittelalter Ideen und Bilder von Zosimos bis Paracelsus (Zurich Artemis. Winkler, 1996) and Newman, "Technology and the Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages," and The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber. 

William Newman has identified the author as Paul of Taranto. William R. Newman, ed., The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber A Critical Edition, Translation and Study (Leiden E. J. Brill, 1991), 634.1 have taken all quotes here from Newman s translation and critical edition of the Summa perfectionis. 

Newman, W.R. (1991). The Summa Terfectionis of Pseudo Geber. A Critical Edition, Translation and Study. Leiden 149-15 7. 

William R. Newman, The Summaperfectionis"of Pseudo-Geber Leiden Brill, 1991), 49—50. For the Arabic text and a translation therefrom, see Avicenna, Avicennae de congelatione et conglutinatione lapidum, ed. and tr. E.J. Holmyard and D. C. Mandeville (Paris PaulGeuthner, 1927), 85—86,41—42. 

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