Talk:Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world

Contradiction?

"Alchemy in Islam differs from traditional alchemy in certain ways, one of which is that Muslim alchemists did not believe in the creation of life in the laboratory."

But according to another wikipedia article on the "Takwin" (a artificial creature created by alchemy) it states the following: "Takwin (Arabic: تكوين) was a goal of certain Ismaili alchemists, notably Jabir ibn Hayyanit ..."

Bill-

Aug 5, 2007

Fact Checks Removed

Why were the fact checks removed? All claims need to be referenced.

Bill 24 May 2008 (UTC)

What Rubbish?

All branches of "chemistry" where under the umbrella name of Alchemy right up until the latter part of the 1700's, when Europeans readopted atomic theory, which itself was also theorised by Europeans, at an age when the people of the Arabian peninsula where living in caves . I am not wanting to belittle the vast contribution made by the Muslim alchemists, but i do find it annoying when people create false history, especially when writing “but later there were disputes between the traditional alchemists and the practical chemists who discredited alchemy”. This is a prime example of innovation so as to crate yet another myth of high utopian Islamic civilisation, if the author had written rubbish about the Islamic faith, then he would have been stoned to death by now. Face the fact mate, Alchemy was alchemy until it became separated by Europeans.

Ahmadwill (talk) 18:09, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Its hilarious you are saying that this is all distortions, when you yourself present a distorted account of the history of Chemistry. It is literally as if they send you from the late XIX century to the present in a time machine.--142.68.47.178 (talk) 21:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes it seems obvious the poster Ahmadwill is posting simply for provocational reasons.

No. Ahmadwill is right per WP:RfC/Jagged 85. And 142.68.47.178 and Mr No Signature should read WP:GOODFAITH. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 13:17, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

How was Ahmadwill's comment in "good faith"? Saying "at an age when the people of the Arabian peninsula where living in caves" and "if the author had written rubbish about the Islamic faith, then he would have been stoned to death by now." is in good faith? 70.187.179.139 (talk) 14:10, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

End of Islamic Alchemy

So when did the practice of "Islamic Alchemy" end? I dont think this article is sufficient without this timeline information.

Henry123ifa

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:38, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Alchemy and chemistry in medieval Islam → Alchemy in medieval Islam – I am proposing this move that I thought would be non-controversial as there is no reliable source for practical chemistry J8079s (talk) 01:43, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose Hodgson (V2 p38) actually, literally, refers to it as alchemy or chemistry. This is unlikely to be a coincidence; more likely this question of alchemy vs chemistry is an unsettled question. Hodgson mentions some work on quantitative analysis in the 11th century, after the corpus of Jabir. And distillation. (p167/18). I believe the subject of the article's name has been discussed even recently. The present title seems the most appropriate. If there are differences of opinion, it is surely the most accurate title. -Aquib (talk) 02:24, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose per Aquib. Given that some of the sources do describe some of the practices and experiments of Islamic scientists as contributing to the development of the field of chemistry, it is POV to remove "chemistry" from the title altogether. Tiamut^talk 08:10, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

History of science assessment - Start class

Just a quick note as to why I have assessed this article as start class.

• The lead could summarize the overall article better
• The article body could be more structured. The biographies section is presented in a nice chronological order, but offers no real indication of how the craft/science developed over those years.
• After reading the article, I have some knowledge of the names of several prominent alchemists, but I only a little about what their alchemy actually consisted of, and nothing at all about the transition into something more like modern chemistry.
• There are reference syntax errors in various places (easily fixed).
• There are several unlinked references to alchemical books with no indication of their significance or content.
• There are several unlinked references to beliefs (e.g. gnosticism) and authorities (e.g. Anawati) with no indication of their significance.
• Occasionally the dense Arabic makes readability difficult.

Overall I feel that the article presents some starting points for research - names, places, years - but doesn't yet present a coherent narrative or leave me with any take-home points. As the quality scale says, "provides some meaningful content but the majority of readers will want more."

Cheers,

Thparkth (talk) 20:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Article structure and flow

• Although the information in the lead paragraph is relevant to this topic, it dominates too much of the page with information that is not directly related to the topic. It reads almost as a research paper with an introduction that sets up the information like that. Instead, the focus of the main paragraph should be what kind of alchemy and chemistry was performed, who performed it, and where/what locations this work was located at. This information should be in there, just not as the main talking point. As it is, it is distracting.
• I think the effect of the experiments done and the outcomes for future experiments/research should be gone into in more depth. How these experiments were accepted by Islamic religious leaders, if it had an effect outside of Islamic culture, etc.

I think all the information currently in this article are relevant, but could be restructured to make it flow better. Some more research into the effects should be done to provide readers with a better understanding of the importance of this topic.

DylanDunbar24 (talk) 16:46, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Additional Info to Jabir Hayyan

I added some addition info the description of Jabir Hayyan and his life, work in alchemy, and contributions. Just some minor stuff, but necessary nonetheless. DylanDunbar24 (talk) 17:07, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 24 October 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Per consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) – robertsky (talk) 10:27, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

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Alchemy and chemistry in the medieval Islamic world → Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world – It is convoluted to have Alchemy and chemistry in the same title. Medieval alchemy and chemistry are synonymous. While some Islamic alchemy may have come close to 'early chemistry', the emergence of the science proper is placed at History of chemistry in the 17th and 18th centuries. The present title presents needless tautology when the nuance would be better expounded in-text. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:27, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

• With the relation between alchemy and chemistry you're touching upon an issue that may be much thornier than you think. See Newman & Principe 1998 (a widely cited paper by two of the most notable experts in the history of alchemy and chemistry) and the two more recent surveys Newman 2011 and Principe 2011. On the one hand, yes, the emerging consensus is that alchemy was simply medieval chemistry, and that the contrasting differentiation between the two as 'pseudoscience' vs 'true science' is a product of Enlightenment polemics (note that if this is true, it is wrong to regard 'the science proper' as a product of the 17th/18th century: it's rather the construction of a non-historical image of alchemy as a pseudoscience that dates to this period, and medieval alchemy is now widely regarded as part and parcel of the history of science). On the other hand, however, there is still a hesitancy to completely abandon the term 'alchemy' and to simply speak of medieval 'chemistry' instead. For the early modern period, the solution has been to use the contemporary term 'chymistry', which was indiscriminately used at the time to refer both to chrysopoeia and to practices more recognizable as modern 'chemistry'. For medieval contexts, however, the double use of 'alchemy' and 'chemistry' in scholarship persists. Also note the name of the major scholarly society in the field, the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry. All that said, I don't think that the addition of "and chemistry" in the title is really necessary to identify the subject, and so per WP:CONCISE it should probably be dropped.

If we're applying WP:CONCISE though and start looking at article title policy more generally, I think it should not go unnoted that the WP:COMMONNAME for this subject is actually Arabic alchemy: compare Google Scholar results for Arabic alchemy (903) vs Islamic alchemy (311) Muslim alchemy (40) Alchemy in the Islamicate world (25) Islamicate alchemy (14) Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world (3) Medieval alchemy in the Islamic world (0; this one is really wrongheaded jarring). The problem with the term 'Arabic alchemy', however, is that it may wrongly suggest that the alchemists involved were ethnically Arabs, which was not always the case. Hallum 2008, p. 17 describes this problem as follows:

When I use the terms Greek, Syriac and Arabic to describe authors and traditions, I mean to describe only the language in which the author so described predominately wrote, or the language in which the texts that make up a tradition are written. I do not mean to imply that the authors who contributed to or those who worked within a certain tradition were ethnically Greeks, Syrians or Arabs; the so-called Greek alchemists were mostly natives of Egypt of Hellenic, Egyptian and Jewish descent and one of the foremost so-called Arab alchemists, al-Razi, was of Persian origins. The use of the term Islamic may seem preferable since it includes Arabs, Persians and all the nationalities living within the Islamic world (Dar al-Islam) and I use the term in this sense in the title of this thesis.

But the term 'Islamic alchemy' has problems too: not all those writing about alchemy in the Islamic world were Muslims, and their discipline was not specifically 'Islamic' in the religious sense anyway. One term that solves these problems and that has seen much increased use during the last 10 years or so is 'Islamicate': referring to everything produced in the time and place when Islam was politically and culturally dominant, it solves the problem by including all linguistic traditions and all religions, while still singling out what they had in common (i.e., being part of the Dar al-islam). As seen from the Google Scholar results cited above though, it is not yet the most common term.

Everything considered, I think that Arabic alchemy and Islamicate alchemy are the two best candidates to name this article. Personally I slightly prefer the latter. Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world and Alchemy in the Islamicate world (which actually has more hits on Google Scholar) are acceptable but perhaps unnecessarily long; also note that even though we don't cover this in our article yet, alchemy was still practiced in the early modern (Ottoman/Safavid) period (see the work of Matthew Melvin-Koushki on this), and it is even said to still exist today in Egypt and Iran (see briefly Principe 2013, p. 50), so 'medieval' is an unneeded limiter. In any case, the first proposed title Medieval alchemy in the Islamic world sounds wrongheaded jarring and is a no-go. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 10:09, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I know the topic alchemy/chemistry divide is a bit of a can of worms, but the use of both terms risks people coming to the page with the assumption of difference. Of the above, I think I still prefer Alchemy in the medieval Islamic world - Arabic, as you say, seems to imply too much about ethnicity and would likely lead to all sorts of neutrality concerns and edit warring. I suggested the term 'Islamicate' on another article recently, but the word hasn't been adopted at all on Wikipedia yet, so vis-a-vis other articles it tends towards slightly jarring consistency issues. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:21, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I was 50:50 on the word order, but since you've expressed a clear preference, I've struck one option to focus the discussion on the key issues at hand. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:24, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

• Hallum, Bink (2008). Zosimus Arabus. The Reception of Zosimos of Panopolis in the Arabic/Islamic World (PhD). University of London.
• Newman, William R.; Principe, Lawrence M. (1998). "Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake". Early Science and Medicine. 3 (1): 32–65.
• Newman, William R. (2011). "What Have We Learned from the Recent Historiography of Alchemy?". Isis. 102 (2): 313–321. doi:10.1086/660140.
• Principe, Lawrence M. (2011). "Alchemy Restored". Isis. 102 (2): 305–312. doi:10.1086/660139.
• Principe, Lawrence M. (2013). The Secrets of Alchemy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226103792.

• Support per WP:CONCISE. There was no distinction between alchemy and chemistry in the medieval world. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:26, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support original proposal. I agree with the previously established points as pertaining to alchemy vs. chemistry – i.e., that there was not a meaningful difference between the two disciplines during the medieval period, and thus that it makes sense to cut "and chemistry" from the article title for WP:CONCISION. In my view, the original proposal is also the best fit for WP:PRECISE and WP:RECOGNIZABLE. My secondary preferences would be Islamicate alchemy and Alchemy in the Islamicate world; "Islamicate" appears to be a useful word for referring to this cultural sphere without unwanted connotations, but in a descriptive title, I think it's better to stick with terms that are more immediately recognizable to the average reader. As for Arabic alchemy, I think it's passable but I share the abovementioned concerns that it might give readers the false impression that the practitioners were ethnically Arab. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 18:29, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
• Support original proposal as an improvement, but would consider alternative refinements in a subsequent discussion. The current title is essentially a case of WP:AND and should be improved. The article primarily discusses alchemy, and describes how alchemy and chemistry differ and how they overlap in this context. Chemistry in the medieval Islamic world would be a great redirect. Mdewman6 (talk) 20:04, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

References

The numbered references are a mess. The first reference to Holmyard is 21 pp. 86-92, Holmyard 1990. But there is no Holmyard 1990. Has someone cut and pasted bits of his unmarked undergraduate essay into this text? Cvhorie (talk) 16:36, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@Cvhorie I found the Holmyard 1990 ref (lurking inconspicuously, starting with the page numbers) and reformatted it: other refs to books could do with being similarly upgraded for clarity. PamD 12:00, 20 January 2024 (UTC)