Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and the Jābirian corpus
This page delivers no verdict; it presents claims and evidence with their sources. No theory in science is absolute. Method
For everyone
The most famous name in Islamic alchemy is Jābir ibn Ḥayyān. Hundreds of works bearing his name deal with the classification of substances, distillation and the mercury–sulphur theory; their Latin translations ("Geber") deeply influenced European alchemy. Whether these works belong to a single person or form a corpus built up over time is debated.
For specialists
Traditionally Jābir is held to have lived in the 8th century and been a student of Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. Paul Kraus (1942–1943), on the basis of linguistic and content analysis of the corpus, argued that most of the works were written in the 9th and 10th centuries in Ismaili circles. Fuat Sezgin defended the traditional attribution. It is now generally accepted that the Latin "Pseudo-Geber" works (Summa perfectionis) were written in 13th-century Europe.
Views on dating
No single date is given because the date is not documented with certainty; the views of different sources are listed.
| Traditional attribution | 8th century (student of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq)[2] |
|---|---|
| Paul Kraus's thesis | Most of the corpus was written in the 9th and 10th centuries.[1] |
Claims
- Metals are formed by mercury and sulphur combining in different proportions and can be transmuted by balancing the proportions.[3]
Connections
Parent
AlchemySources
- Book (1942). Jābir ibn Ḥayyān: Contribution à l'histoire des idées scientifiques dans l'Islam (2 vols.). Mémoires de l'Institut d'Égypte 44–45, Cairo
- Book (1971). Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Band IV: Alchimie, Chemie, Botanik, Agrikultur. E. J. Brill, Leiden
- EncyclopediaSimya. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisiislamansiklopedisi.org.trarchive
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Cite this page
Athena contributors. (2026). Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and the Jābirian corpus. Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/cabir/
@misc{athena_cabir,
title = {Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and the Jābirian corpus},
author = {{Athena contributors}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://latifkedi.github.io/athena/en/d/cabir/}},
note = {Athena: The tree of human knowledge. Accessed: 2026-11-01}
}Added: September 27, 2026 · Last changed: September 27, 2026 · Page history