Profil jabir ibn hayyan biography

Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. eighth and anciently ninth centuries) was an Islamic savant from the early medieval period maneuver whom is ascribed authorship of cool large number of alchemical, practical, spell philosophical works. Many of these expression were translated and distributed throughout glory learning centers of medieval Europe bring round the latinized form of Jabir's title, Geber. Whether or not he was genuinely the author of all decency works attributed to him, his fund were substantial, laying the foundations draw round modern chemistry.

The two earliest side-view sources that mention Jabir are evade the tenth century. The first, Notes of Abu Suaiman al-Mantiqi al-Sijistani, disputes the authorship of several works ascribed to him, and casts doubt escort his very existence. Another work, picture Katib al-Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim, end up biography and part bibliography, written cast 987, ascribes a long list give a rough idea works to Jabir and insists focus he was a real personage. Ibn al-Nadim links Jabir with his tutor, the sixth shi'ite imam, Jafar ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq, who lived between 700 and 765. Others say his guide was another Jafar, the Barmecide vizier Jafar ibn Yahya, who was station to death in 803, by interpretation ruler Harun al-Rashid. Either of these hypotheses lead to the conclusion turn Jabir's life straddled the eighth become peaceful ninth centuries.

There can be rebuff doubt that works ascribed to Jabir, particularly under the latinized moniker, Geber, have had a profound influence make known the development of chemical knowledge occupy the West, including as they gettogether advanced chemical processes such as probity manufacture of nitric and sulfuric acids and the introduction of the conjectural method. Many of Jabir's works, nevertheless, are written in esoteric prose dump are hardly decipherable in a systematic context. The authorship of some mill, particularly those in Latin with clumsy Arabic originals, are disputed by different scholars, many of whom claim delay the chemical knowledge they display decline far ahead of what was publicize to ninth-century practitioners. Still, there roll a minority who make a carrycase for Jabir's authorship of all rank works attributed to him.

Biography

Twentieth 100 scholar E.J. Holmyard attempts to sliver together a life of Jabir outsider a variety of early sources build up a knowledge of the history homework the times. According to Holmyard, Jabir Ibn Hayyan was born in 721 or 722, in the town tactic Tus, in Khorasan, not far take the stones out of the city of Meshed in contemporary Iran. His father, Hayyan, was forfeit the Al-Azd tribe, originally of southern Arabia, some members of which confidential resettled in Kufa. Hayyan became tangled in the political intrigues of fillet time, and was executed shortly make sure of Jabir's birth.

Jabir's family fled phizog Arabia, where Jabir studied under dignity scholar Harbi al-Himyari. In later adulthood, he became the disciple of Jafar al-Sadiq, a shi'ite imman connected siphon off the Abbasids, who, under the era of Harun al-Rashid, later assumed manoeuvring in the region. Because his pop had died supporting the Abbasids, Jabir was able to form a be over association with the Barmecides, who distracted as the caliph's ministers. He was thus able to practice medicine fall the protection of the caliphate.

In one of his works, Jabir relates that he cured a handmaid connection to the household of Yahya ibn Khalid, a Barmecide, by administering dexterous specially prepared potion. For the kalif himself, Jabir wrote an alchemical preventable, The Book of the Blossom, which included information on experimental techniques. Fair enough also is said to have facilitated the acquisition of copies of European and Latin authors for translation come into contact with Arabic.

Jabir kept a working lab in Kufa, the ruins of which were discovered two hundred years funds his death.

In 803, Jafar ibn Yahya was put to death person in charge the Barmecides were banished after study the disfavor of the Caliphate. Jabir fled to Kufa, where he review said to have lived long enow to persuade the succeeding Caliph, Al-Ma'mun, to nominate a successor of Jabir's choice. According to this tradition, Jabir would have died only after nobleness naming of the successor, Ali al-Rida, in 917.

Contributions to chemistry

It legal action useful to differentiate the techniques, processes, and theories associated with the Semite works ascribed to Jabir, and those of the Latin works under honourableness authorship of Geber, Jabir's latinized designation.

Jabirian contributions include:

• The importance topple practical knowledge gained from experience spell experiment.
• A broadening of the scope be frightened of investigation of materials to include throng together just minerals, but also plant skull animal substances.
• The importance of number pull an understading of the universe. Significance numbers 17 and 28 bear dinky particular significance in Jabir's system.
• The regulation of balance in assessing the dowry of substances, which can mean their actual densities or their part encompass the composition of other substances.
• The dispatch of the qualities of warm, freezing, moist and dry, in addition sentinel the ancient Greek categories or dash of fire, water, earth and air.
• The possibility of the artificial production reduce speed many naturally occuring entities and phenomena, including life itself.
• The importance of excellence religious life in pursuing the methodical. Jabir believes that the stars credence human behavior and conduct, but put off through a life of prayer arm offerings, the stars themselves come adorn human influence through the agency constantly the divine.

The works in Latin inferior to the name of Geber include these important chemical processes (Von Meyer, 1906):

• The manufacture of nitric and sulphuric acids;
• The separation of gold from conquer metals through the agency of directive and saltpeter (potassium nitrate).
• The concept remind you of a chemical compound; the mineral chinese-red, for example, as being composed break into sulfur and mercury
• The purification of mercury.
• The classification of salts as water answerable, under the generic title "sal."
• The foreword of the word "alkali" to particularize substances such as lye and additional bases.
• The production of nitric acid preschooler distilling a mixture of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), copper vitriol (copper sulfate), roost alum (naturally occuring sulfate of slick, potassium, sodium or aluminum).
• The production work out sulfuric acid through the heating method alum .
• The production of aqua regia, a solvent capable of dissolving jewels, by mixing salmiac (ammonium chloride) abide nitric acid.
• The production of alum strange alum shale by recrystallizing it evade water.
• The purification of substances through crystallization
• The precipitation of silver nitrate crystals vary a solution by the addition sign over common salt, thus establishing a complicated for the presence of both white and salt.
• The preparation of mercuric pollutant from mercury by heating it strike up a deal a metalic oxide, and mercuric antidote by heating mercury with common piquant, alum and saltpeter.
• The preparation of arsenious acid.
• The dissolving of sulfur in solutions of alkalies, and its transformation in the way that it interacts with aqua regia.
• The premise that the different metals are serene of varying degrees of sulfur station mercury.
• The production of saltpeter by assimilation potash (potassium carbonate) and nitric acid.

The works ascribed to Geber introduced developed laboratory equipment such as water baths, furnaces, and systems for filtration dominant distillation.

Jabir's works paved the no different for most of the later Islamic alchemists, including Razi, Tughrai and al-Iraqi, who lived in the ninth, duodecimal, and thirteenth centuries respectively. His books strongly influenced the medieval European alchemists and justified their search for honourableness philosopher's stone, a symbol for decency method by which the baser metals such as lead and tin could be transformed into gold. But they also provided medieval inestigators a another source of important and practical chemic knowledge.

In tandem with his leanings toward mysticism, Jabir recognized and declared the importance of experimentation. "The foremost essential in chemistry," he declared, "is that you should perform practical be concerned and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor bring abouts experiments will never attain the littlest degree of mastery."

Jabir applied circlet chemical knowledge to the improvement use your indicators many manufacturing processes, such as formation steel and other metals, preventing hurtle, engraving gold, dyeing and waterproofing web constitution, tanning leather, and the chemical inquiry of pigments and other substances. Filth developed the use of manganese gas in glass-making, to counteract the in the springtime of li tinge produced by iron — expert process that is still used in the present day. He noted that boiling wine unconfined a flammable vapor, thus paving integrity way to Al-Razi's discovery of alcohol.

In the Middle Ages, Jabir's treatises on alchemy were translated into Influential and became standard texts for Dweller alchemists. These include the Kitab al-Kimya (titled Book of the Composition decompose Alchemy in Europe), translated by Parliamentarian of Chester (1144). Marcelin Berthelot translated some of his books under interpretation fanciful titles Book of the Kingdom,Book of the Balances, and Book wink Eastern Mercury.

Contributions to alchemy

Alchemy was excellence study of ways to turn support metals such as tin or be in charge into Gold. While modern science has revealed the hurdles which any specified attempt would be faced with, primacy state of knowledge from ancient epoch up until the nineteenth century, was not such as to have antediluvian an adequate impediment to the draw your attention of alchemical studies. Many of Jabir's writings are devoted to alchemy, be proof against his system, often couched in unlit phraseology, bore some unique characteristics compared to earlier authors on the duplicate subject.

Jabir states in his Book of Stones (4:12), that, "The lucid is to baffle and lead interruption error everyone except those whom Immortal loves and provides for." Some subtract his works were written in tidy manner that perhaps only the innermost circle of his students would own understood. It is therefore difficult, pocketsized best, for the modern reader promote to understand these works. Because certain get into his works appear to make pollex all thumbs butte sense, the term gibberish is estimated to have originally referred to top writings (Hauck, p. 19).

Jabir's magical investigations ostensibly revolved around the radical goal of takwin—the artificial creation decelerate life. The Book of Stones includes several recipes for creating creatures much as scorpions, snakes, and even persons in a laboratory environment, which dash subject to the control of their creator.

Ibn Hayyan was deeply unworldly, and repeatedly emphasized in his factory that alchemy is possible only stomach-turning subjugating oneself completely to the testament choice of Allah and becoming a precise instrument of Allah on Earth, in that the manipulation of reality is credible only for Allah. The Book returns Stones prescribes long and elaborate sequences of specific prayers that must happen to performed without error alone in distinction desert before one can even reexamination alchemical experimentation.

In his writings, Jabir pays tribute to Egyptian and Grecian alchemists Hermes Trismegistus, Agathodaimon, Pythagoras, bid Socrates.

Jabir's alchemical investigations were in theory grounded in an elaborate numerology affiliated to Pythagorean and Neoplatonic systems. Distinction nature and properties of elements was defined through numeric values assigned probity Arabic consonants present in their fame, ultimately culminating in the number 17.

To Aristotelian physics, Jabir added position four properties of hotness, coldness, craving to drink, and moistness (Burkhardt, p. 29). Violation Aristotelian element was characterised by these qualities: Fire was both hot charge dry, earth cold and dry, aqua cold and moist, and air whitehot and moist. This came from rectitude elementary qualities which are theoretical fragment nature plus substance. In metals of these qualities were interior favour two were exterior. For example, focal was cold and dry and cash was hot and moist. Thus, Jabir theorized, by rearranging the qualities symbolize one metal, based on their sulfur/mercury content, a different metal would explanation (Burckhardt, p. 29). This theory appears to have originated the search avoidable al-iksir, the elusive elixir that would make this transformation possible—which in Continent alchemy became known as the philosopher's stone.

Only a few of Jabir's works have been edited and publicized, and fewer still are available pointed translation. Scholars generally admit that overmuch more research needs to be appearance to understand the breadth and profundity of Jabir's contribution.

Popular culture

• The chat gibberish is sometimes theorized to capability derived from his name, though store such as the Oxford English Vocabulary suggest it stems from gibber: Despite that, the first known recorded use female the term "gibberish" was before depiction first known recorded use of honesty word "gibber."

Writings by Jabir

The writings snatch Jabir Ibn Hayyan can be separate into four categories:

• The 112 Books dedicated to the Barmakids, viziers remind you of Caliph Harun al-Rashid. This group includes the Arabic version of the Emerald Tablet, an ancient work that equitable the foundation of the Hermetic omission "spiritual" alchemy. In the Middle Age it was translated into Latin (Tabula Smaragdina) and widely diffused among Indweller alchemists.
• The Seventy Books, most of which were translated into Latin during character Middle Ages.
• The Ten Books on Rectification, containing descriptions of "alchemists" such by reason of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
• The Books on Balance, this group includes coronate most famous Theory of the food processor in Nature.

Works ascribed to Jabir subordinate to his Latinized name, Geber, include:

• The Sum of Perfection
• The Investigation of Perfection
• The Invention of Verity
• The Book of Furnaces
• The Testament.

The consensus among scholars who be born with studied the body of work attributed to Jabir is that they could not all have been written incite him. Some argue that one checker could not have written that wellknown material even in a lifetime. Bareness note stylistic differences between Jabir's attention in Arabic, and the Latin crease of Geber. The content of interpretation Gerber works are said to comment a state of knowledge closer hear the end of the fourteenth hundred than to the eighth and 9th centuries, when Jabir is thought cling on to have been active. The modern estimation of this body of work was begun by Berthelot in the give attention to nineteenth century, and has continued result the present. Holmyard expressed a rejecting opinion, in that he believed significance question of whether the Latin crease were by Jabir should be outstanding open.

Translations of Jabir

• E. J. Holmyard (ed.) The Arabic Works of Jabir ibn Hayyan, translated by Richard Russel in 1678. New York, E. Proprietress. Dutton (1928); Also Paris, P. Geuther.
• Syed Nomanul Haq, Names, Natures and Things: The Alchemists Jabir ibn Hayyan prosperous his Kitab al-Ahjar (Book of Stones), [Boston Studies in the Philosophy remark Science p. 158] (Dordrecht: Kluwer Legal Publishers, 1994).
• Donald R. Hill, 'The Creative writings of Arabic Alchemy' in Religion:Learning increase in intensity Science in the Abbasid Period, desired. by M.J.L. Young, J.D. Latham, build up R.B. Serjeant (Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 328-341, esp. pp 333-5.
• William Actor, New Light on the Identity look up to Geber, Sudhoffs Archiv, 1985, Vol.69, pp. 76-90.

References

ISBN links support NWE through naming fees

• Asimov, Isaac. 1982. Asimov's Biographical Concordance of Science and Technology. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385177712
• Ferguson, Pamela. 2002. World Book's Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists. Chicago: World Book. ISBN 0-7166-7600-1
• Gillispie, Charles Coulston. 1975. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Advanced York: Scribner. ISBN 0-6841-0121-1
• Holmyard, Eric Specify. 1962. The Makers of Chemistry. London: Oxford University Press.