Chemistry In Islam: Chemistry In Islam

Chemistry In Islam

E. J. Holmyard

About the author:

Eric John Holmyard (1891–1959) was an English science teacher at Clifton College and historian of science and technology. As a textbook author, he pioneered an approach to science teaching that included historical material. "His historicized science books were an enormous and long-term commercial success, with Elementary Chemistry (1925) alone selling half-a-million copies by 1960.

In the Mediaeval times the early Muslim chemists enjoyed great reputation for their contributions in the field of chemistry.

The technical language of chemistry is a great problem to all students. It is often obscure. This feature is common to alchemical works in all languages including Arabic.

Scholars become amazed when they come to read the early Muslims books. There were two main divisions of chemistry at that time:

1- One which are inspired by the true scientific spirit and can be interpreted with comparative ease by a present-day chemist.

2- those treatises which are for the most part mystical books, the authors of which use the technical terms of chemistry to express religious ideas.

Two of the most famous Muslim chemists are Jabir ibn Hayyan and Rhazes. A lot of writings assured that the true founder of chemistry as a science was Jabir ibn Hayyan and Rhazes who derived much of his information from Jabir's books. Other Muslim chemists tried hard in chemistry ,but it is impossible to name any other Muslim chemist of the caliber of Jabir and Rhazes.

Jabir was a fluent writer, and a large number of his books are extant. Unfortunately a few of them have been published. Mr. Paul Geuthner agreed to publish a complete edition of all those works of Jabir which exist.Jabir's most ...

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...at occupied a key position in medieval astronomy.

Outside optics and mechanics the medieval world achieved little in physics , the other branches of the subject not having been freed from various metaphysical speculations or generally reduced to mathematical expression.

Jabir inb Hayyan commented in the 8th or 9th century on the nature of magnetic force ; and though the derivation of magnetic compass may be Chinese, it was first widely used for navigational purposes by Muslims in medieval times.

The theory of rainbow , especially, figures throughout Arabic physics from Al-Kindi to Ash-Shirazi ,initially in terms of reflection on the basis of Aristotelian and Euclidean ideas, and finally incorporating the theory of refraction which derived from Ibn al-Haitham .