When was jabir ibn hayyan born

Likewise, this hypothesis also suggests that the so-called Jabirian Corpus is in fact the combined work of some of his pupils and followers of the so-called Brethren of Purity —a secret confraternity whose philosophical-religious teachings enjoyed wide influence and acceptance. The existence of a recognised collective to whom the authorship of the texts could be assigned, and among whom Abu Barkr al-Razi c.

Among the most important contributions present in the Arabic writings attributed to Jabir is the importance of practical knowledge acquired through experience and experimentation, i. Also of significance is the study of matter and its classification into animal, vegetable and mineral; the introduction of intrinsic properties of different substances such as warm, moist and dry; and the possibility of artificially reproducing many naturally occurring phenomena and materials.

Even more significant is the knowledge contained in the Latin Geber texts also known as the Pseudo-Gerber Corpus , which includes the systematic description of numerous chemical processes and reactions, from the synthesis of acids such as nitric and sulphuric to aqua regia , oxides and salts. In addition, it details many techniques of chemistry such as precipitation, crystallisation and distillation, and provides instructions for making the apparatus and equipment necessary to carry them out.

It also introduces methods for improving the quality of a multitude of manufactured products such as the production of steel and other metals and the passivation of their oxidation ; the dyeing and waterproofing of cotton and leather; the chemical analysis of pigments and other natural substances; the purification of gold; and the production of pure mercury from cinnabar. This corpus became a point of reference for scientists of the following centuries, as well as for the craftsmen of different trades.

These writings describe practical applications such as the use of manganese oxide in the production of glass so as to avoid the greenish hue produced by iron and obtain a translucent material, or the production of flammable vapour by boiling wine. In short, it was an indispensable and unrivalled source of knowledge of experimental chemistry for the alchemists of the West—at least until the appearance of the new treatises of the 16th century, such as De re metallica On the Nature of Metals , Georg Bauer, As if the enigmatic figure of Jabir and the mystery of the authorship of the work were not enough, there are even more doubts about the reappearance of his work towards the end of the Middle Ages in Europe under the name of Geber, as mentioned above.

However, once again, the hypothesis that currently generates the most consensus is that Geber and Jabir are not the same person ; the former was probably a Spanish-Arab monk or alchemist living on the peninsula who, after translating part of the original Jabirian Corpus and being influenced by it, would have written his own works, signing them under the name of Geber, likely to endow them with greater authority. This assumption is again based on the obvious divergences between the original writings and the medieval ones, since the latter reflect a much higher degree of knowledge of chemical processes and a far more systematic approach to these phenomena, more in line with the understanding of natural phenomena reached in the 15th century than with that prevailing half a millennium earlier.

But regardless of the question of whether Jabir actually existed and wrote the entire body of work or whether the texts under the name of Geber are the translations of that earlier work or those of an anonymous medieval alchemist, what is beyond doubt is the enormous influence that both the original and the Latinised version had on the development of alchemy—and its final transmutation into a modern science: chemistry , first in the Islamic world and then, centuries later, in Europe.

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Handshake HireNKU. Virtual OneStop. Change Password. A-Z List. The main object of alchemy was to discover a method which would transmute the base metals into the purest form of metal, gold; this could be done by means of a supposed substance called "red sulfur" by the Moslems and "the philosophers' stone" by Europeans.

In the process of searching for red sulfur, Jabir and other Moslem alchemists developed a great many sound facts and processes which formed some of the basic building blocks for the science of chemistry. In terms of practical methods evolved by Jabir and set forth in the almost works ascribed to him, we are indebted to Moslem alchemy for methods of distillation, evaporation, crystallization, filtration, and sublimation.

Methods of producing a considerable number of chemical substances are described: nitric acid, sulfuric acid, mercury oxide, lead acetate, and others.

None of Jabir's works has been translated into English, but E.