The Book on Alums and Salts of Pseudo-Rāzī

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APPENDICES

Appendix 1. Table of Contents of MS Sprenger 1908, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung⁵⁰⁹

1. preparation of the argilla philosophorum; use of the aludel (fol. 2 recto)

2. generation of animal life from vegetable life; the seven metals (fol. 2 verso)

3. alchemical lexicon of Decknamen for metals (fols. 3 recto-4 recto)

4. alchemical lexicon of Decknamen for volatile substances (fols. 4 verso-5 verso)

5. alchemical lexicon of Decknamen for stones (fols. 5 verso-6 recto)

6. laboratory equipment (fols. 6 recto-7 verso)

7. sublimation (fols. 7 verso-8 recto)

8. preparation of red sal ammoniac (fol. 8 recto)

9. calcination and dissolution of salt (fol. 8 verso)

10. reddening of the precious stone (fol. 9 recto)

11. calcination of the Sun; calcination and reddening of tutty (fol. 9 verso)

12. red mercury (fol. 10 recto)

13. calcination of gold; dyed iron; calcination of copper; water of vitriol (fol. 10 verso)

14. distillation of the red colour and of hematite (fol. 11 recto)

15. water of vitriol (fols. 11 verso-12 recto)

16. distillation of marcasite; operations on animal substances (fol. 12 recto)

17. useful animal substances for the alchemical work; the seven spiritual things entering the operation; calcination of the Moon; water of sal ammoniac and sulphur (fol. 12 verso)

18. calcination of glass (fol. 12 verso)

19. operations on the Moon; dissolution of mercury (fol. 13 recto)

20. quick dissolution of talc (fol. 13 verso)

21. red dye; operations on white lead (fol. 14 recto)

22. operations on the Sun (fol. 14 verso)

23. dyeing of the Sun (fols. 14 verso-15 recto)

24. operations on the Moon; sublimation of musk, camphor, and saffron (fol. 15 recto)

25. operations on camphor; sublimation of rose water; sublimation of wood; congealment of the Moon (fol. 15 verso)

26. operations on the Moon (fol. 16 recto)

27. operations on cinnabar; red sulphur (fol. 16 verso)

28. operations on talc (fol. 17 recto)

29. amalgamation of the Sun (fol. 17 verso)

30. transmutation of the Moon into the Sun; cleaning of gold (fol. 18 recto)

31. cleaning of the silver; operations on the Sun (fol. 18 verso)

32. Pseudo-Rāzī’s On Alums and Salts (fols. 19 recto-30 verso)

33. increase of the weight of gold with silver; preparation of a solvent for stones and metals (fols. 30 verso-31 recto)

34. transmutation of base metals into silver; operations on silver (fol. 31 recto)

35. transmutation of glass into a precious stone (fol. 31 verso)

36. operations on the Sun; fixation of cinnabar; yellowing of cinnabar (fol. 32 recto)

37. preparation of gold with mercury; operations on gold (fol. 32 verso)

38. increase of the weight of gold with iron (fol. 33 recto)

39. discourse on the calcination and the operation on the bodies; calcination of the Sun; calcination of the Moon (fol. 33 verso)

40. calcination of Venus; calcination of lead and of qala‘ī; calcination of Mars (fol. 34 recto)

41. calcination of common stones; melting of the bodies; dissolution of spirits: arsenic and sulphur (fol. 34 verso)

42. operations on metals; operations on the Sun (fol. 35 recto)

43. sublimation of Mars; operation of the amalgam (fol. 35 verso)

44. softening of the Sun (fol. 36 recto)

45. operations on salts (fol. 36 verso)

46. restraining the fleeing [servant] (fol. 37 recto)

47. operations on the Sun; rectification of the Sun; sublimation of the servant (fol. 37 verso)

48. the rust of qala‘ī; the milk of the virgin (fol. 38 recto)

49. the white elixir for the rectification of qala‘ī; distillation of vitriol and Mars (fol. 38 verso)

50. congealment of mercury; melting of glass (fol. 39 recto)

51. operations for obtaining gold and silver (fol. 39 verso)

52. whitening of sulphur; fixation of sal ammoniac; melting of copper filings; operations on silver (fol. 40 recto)

53. melting of iron; recipes for obtaining the Moon (fol. 41 recto)

54. congealment of the servant; operation of Hermes (fols. 41 verso-42 recto)

55. cleaning of Venus; operations on the servant (fol. 42 verso)

56. dialogue between mercury and gold (fol. 43 verso)⁵¹⁰

57. operations on gold; calcination of the Moon; operations on green vitriol (fol. 44 recto)

58. operations on pearl (fol. 44 verso)

59. preparation of the Moon with the servant (fol. 45 recto)

60. congealment of the servant (fol. 45 verso)

61. purification of Venus; softening and whitening of Venus (fol. 46 recto)

Appendix 2. Table of Contents of the Hebrew MS Orient. Oct. 514, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung⁵¹¹

1. operations on silver (fol. 1 recto)

2. preparation of a solvent for metals (fol. 1 verso)

3. operations on salt and alum; washing of the egg; preparation of vitriol from glass; preparation of sharp water (fol. 2 recto)

4. congealment of common salt; quotation of Bernard⁵¹² (fol. 2 verso)

5. cooking of lead; preparation of sharp waters (fol. 3 recto)

6. distillation of mercury; preparation of sharp waters; quotation of ‘the philosophers’ (fol. 3 verso)

7. mixing sulphur with other substances; dissolution of hematite; clay of wisdom; cooking of copper (fol. 4 recto)

8. preparation of waters; operations on silver and iron; congealment of spirits; congealment of mercury (fol. 4 verso)

9. dissolution of borax and alum with moisture; resurrection of sulphur and mercury (fol. 5 recto)

10. whitening of mercury; operation on alkali salt and lime (fol. 5 verso)

11. whitening of sulphur and arsenic; whitening of mercury (fol. 6 recto)

12. whitening of mercury; cooking of arsenic (fols. 6 recto-6 verso)⁵¹³

13. congealment of mercury; making sharp water from sulphur; sublimation of iron (fol. 7 recto)

14. sublimation of the two kinds of lead, of marcasite, of gold and of silver (fol. 7 verso)

15. sublimation of copper; dissolution of mercury; dissolution with sharp waters; congealment of lead and iron (fol. 8 recto)

16. difference between kinds of fire; roasting of iron; burning of iron and silver (fol. 8 verso)

17. roasting of iron; rectification of vitriol with water (fol. 9 recto)

18. melting of lead; melting of glass (fol. 9 verso)

19. melting of talc, of glass and of silver (fol. 10 recto)

20. preparation of iron; operation for obtaining the Sun (fol. 10 verso)

21. operation with eggshells and sulphur operation on iron; hematite from iron; quotation of Ǧābir (fol. 11 recto)

22. the truthful operation of gšpnp⁵¹⁴ (fols. 11 verso-12 recto)

23. operation called ‘the Messiah of the righteous’ (fol. 12 verso)

24. melting of arsenic and sulphur; quotation of Mary, the alchemist (fol. 13 recto)

25. quotation of ryskr⁵¹⁵; rectification of mercury (fol. 13 verso)

26. operation with rock salt and Egyptian vitriol; sharp waters; quotation of Ǧābir (fol. 14 recto)

27. cleaning of iron; cleaning of the two kinds of lead; congealment of white copper (fols. 14 verso-15 recto)

28. description of two substances called ‘the root that sprouts and that the philosophers concealed’ and ‘the gentleman that heals gold and silver by whitening them’ (fol. 15 verso)

29. description of a water of alkali salt that whitens and does not burn; quotation of the book ‘Treatise on copper’ (fol. 16 recto)

30. quotation of Ǧābir on the transmutation of silver into gold; operation on red arsenic (fol. 16 verso)

31. on the ‘soap of the Sages’ (fol. 17 recto)

32. method for cleaning of minerals (fol. 17 verso)

33. description of bitter salt and alum of glass; operation on pure mercury; operations on iron, tutty and alkali salt (fols. 18 verso-19 recto)

34. On Alums and Salts by Pseudo-Rāzī (fols. 19 verso-36 recto)

35. Chapters of the annotations of the Sages (fols. 36 recto-37 recto)

36. sharp waters for whitening; preparing the ‘milk of the virgin’ (fol. 37 verso)

37. operations with mercury, lead, arsenic (fol. 38 recto)

38. operations with mercury and tin; operation with mercury and pure lead (fol. 38 verso)

39. operation on borax; preparation of a margerita (‘daisy’) (fol. 39 recto)

40. description of the operations of sublimation and distillation; operation on alum; operation on lime; operation with juices (fol. 39 verso)

41. operations with vegetable juices; operations on copper and sulphur; operation on sheets of silver; operation with sulphur and salt (fol. 40 recto)

42. operation with ground tin and iron filings; operation on silver; operation on tutty; washing of mercury; congealment of mercury (fols. 40 verso-41 verso)

43. quotation of Ǧābir on the importance of salt in the alchemical work; operations with salt (fol. 42 recto)

44. operations with sharp water (fol. 42 verso)

45. congealment of dissolved substances; operations on crystal; operations on lime; operations with alkali salt; operation with vegetable juices (fol. 43 recto)

46. operations with bread salt and urine; operations with ashes and grease (fol. 43 verso)

47. operations with chicken eggs; operations with atrament and rock salt; operation with sheets of metal; operation with sublimed mercury (fol. 44 recto)

48. ashes found in red alum (fol. 44 verso)

49. operation with arsenic and eggshells; operation with litharge, red arsenic, and alum (fol. 45 recto)

50. operation with sublimed mercury and pure atrament (fols. 45 verso-46 recto)

51. the great secret of antimony; mention of Aristotle (fol. 46 verso)

52. congealment of mercury; mention of Arnaldus de Villa Nova; operations for making the Sun (fol. 47 recto);

53. operation for making the Moon (fol. 47 verso)

54. Hermes’ medicine; mention of alchemical (and non-strictly alchemical) authorities: Maimonides, Hermes, Ǧābir, Avicenna, Alberto (Magnus), Thomas (Aquinas), (Roger) Bacon; mention of the Sefer Elim (fols. 48 recto & verso)

55. operations with tutty and mercury; congealment of the servant (fols. 49 recto)

56. rectification of the zynpry’w (fol. 49 verso)

57. preparation of red water and of water of lime (fol. 50 recto)

58. whitening of the scorpion; grease of the scorpion (fol. 50 verso)

59. washing of iron filings (fol. 51 recto)

60. grease of the scorpion (fols. 51 verso-52 recto)

61. operations on mercury; lime of the Moon (fol. 52 verso)

62. operation with sulphur, mercury, olive oil, and vinegar; operation of the Sun (fol. 53 recto)

63. operations for the production of gold and silver (fol. 53 verso)

64. operation called ‘the Messiah’; whitening of the scorpion; congealment of the servant (fol. 54 recto)

65. operation with bitter salt and bread salt; congealment of the servant (fol. 54 verso)

66. operation with the scorpion; sublimation of the eagle (fol. 55 recto)

67. operation with silver; preparation of red wax; preparation of pepper (fol. 55 verso)

68. preparation of amalgams; melting in the crucible (fol. 56 recto)

69. operation with pomegranate peel; operations for whitening (fol. 56 verso)

70. preparation of sharp vinegar; operation with sulphur (fol. 57 recto)

71. operation on iron filings (fol. 57 verso)

72. operation with mercury and arsenic; operation with sal ammoniac, vitriol, and borax (fol. 58 recto)

73. operation with sal ammoniac, vitriol, sulphur, and egg white (fol. 58 verso)

74. operations with tin and mercury (fol. 59 recto)

75. purification of the spirit of silver with tin (fol. 59 verso)

76. operation with iron and salt (fol. 60 recto)

77. operation with iron filings and sal ammoniac (fol. 60 verso)

78. operation with water of the eagle, the eagle, and arsenic; operation with eggshells, alkali salt, vitriol, salt of Andara and kitchen salt (fols. 61 recto & verso)

79. operation with mercury, eagle, and iron filings; oil of the eagle; reddening of vitriol; making of the water of the servant (fol. 62 recto)

80. mixing the servant with tutty; water of vitriol and scorpion (fol. 62 verso)

81. operation with yellow poison; operation with egg; operation with a spirit, mercury, vitriol, sulphur, verdigris, and cinnabar (fol. 63 recto)

82. purification of the spirit; operation with kitchen salt, alkali salt, and salt of borax; operation with red vitriol, the scorpion, kitchen salt, and verdigris (fol. 63 verso)

83. operation with sublimed servant for making the Sun; operation with the servant, the eagle, and the scorpion (fol. 64 recto)

84. operation with arsenic (fol. 64 verso)

85. operation with the eagle; operations with eggs (fol. 65 recto)

86. operation with iron filings; preparation of an amalgam (fol. 65 verso)

87. operation with a spirit, sulphur, mercury, verdigris, cinnabar, and red vitriol; operation with iron filings (fol. 66 recto)

88. operation with spirit, the scorpion, the servant, antimony, verdigris, and red vitriol (fol. 66 verso)

89. operation with arsenic and borax (fols. 67 recto & verso)

90. operation with iron filings; operation with arsenic, sulphur, and salt (fol. 68 recto)

91. preparation of ashes from which a water is obtained; operation with mercury, the scorpion, the eagle, and alum (fol. 68 verso)

92. operation with mercury, sal ammoniac, iron filings (fol. 69 recto)

93. melting of the Moon; operation with lime, alkali salt, and the scorpion; clay of wisdom; the elixir (fol. 69 verso)

94. calcination of Jupiter; operation with the Moon, alum, the servant, and tin; cleaning of arsenic in cow’s milk (fol. 70 recto)

95. operation with exhalations of tutty, mercury, and the scorpion; operation with lime, borax, the eagle, and salt; operation with verdigris and antimony (fol. 70 verso)

96. operation on tin; operation on the servant (fol. 71 recto)

97. operation with the eagle, borax, and salt of Andara; operation with iron filings (fol. 71 verso)

98. operation with the slave, copper filings, the scorpion, bitter salt, and white vitriol; making of lime with eggshells (fol. 72 recto)

99. operation with the scorpion, the eagle, verdigris and antimony; operation with white iron and the Moon (fol. 72 verso)

100. operation with silver and iron; congealment of the servant (fol. 73 recto)

101. operation with antimony, verdigris, and the eagle (fol. 73 verso)

102. operation with bread salt, the scorpion, and vitriol; melting of lead (fol. 74 recto)

103. ‘killing’ of the servant with sulphur; melting of white lead; operation with filings of Mars (fol. 74 verso)

104. operation with tin and egg white; operation with calx and egg white; operation with the servant and water of the scorpion; operation with tartar (fol. 75 recto)

105. operation with mercury and lead; operation with the scorpion and litharge; operation with vinegar of the root of celandine (fol. 75 verso)

106. washing of lime with grease; lacuna (fol. 76 recto)

107. lacuna (fols. 76 verso-77 verso)

108. operation with the servant and filings of the Moon; operation with mercury, verdigris, and the scorpion (fol. 78 recto)

109. operation with antimony, verdigris, and borax (fols. 78 verso & 79 recto)

110. operations for mixing the Moon and the Sun (fol. 79 verso)

111. operation with mercury; operation with yellow arsenic (fol. 80 recto)

112. preparation of water of copper; melting of vitriol; operation with borax and iron filings (fol. 80 verso)

113. operation with arsenic; operation with iron and copper filings (fol. 81 recto)

114. operation with verdigris (fol. 81 verso)

115. appeal to the secrecy of the operations described (fol. 82 recto)

116. operation with ground sal ammoniac and ground verdigris (fol. 82 verso)

117. operation with eggs and eggshells (fol. 83 recto)

118. melting of the Sun (fol. 83 verso)

119. operations with antimony, the scorpion, and verdigris (fol. 84 recto)

120. operation with red arsenic, the scorpion, and the slave; grinding of antimony (fol. 84 verso)

121. operation with cow’s bile and honey; operation with arsenic (fol. 85 recto)

122. operation with red lead and ground glass; operation with antimony, the scorpion, copper, and the eagle (fol. 85 verso)

123. operations with white lead, silver, soap, and oil (fol. 86 recto)

124. separation of copper; operation with tin, vitriol, and vinegar; increase of the weight of the scorpion and arsenic (fol. 86 verso)

125. operation with the oil of the scorpion; operation with pure mercury; operation on the stone found in cow’s dung (fol. 87 recto)

126. operation with verdigris, silver filings, and white lead; operation with antimony and silver (fol. 87 verso)

127. operation with arsenic; operation with cinnabar (fol. 88 recto)

128. clay of wisdom, verdigris, and ashes; operation with cinnabar and pure verdigris (fol. 88 verso)

129. operation with cinnabar and verdigris (fols. 89 recto & verso)

130. [German indication of the number of folios in the manuscript, dated March 13, 1975] (fol. 90 recto)

Appendix 3. Comparative Table of Contents of the Different Versions of On Alums and Salts

The following table shows the relationship between the sections the Hebrew (H), the Arabic (A), and the Latin versions of the OAS (L^A: edition Arbuthnot 2002; L^R: edition Ruska 1935; L^S: edition Steele 1929). A dash (–) indicates the absence of the section in the corresponding version. No extant manuscript includes all the topics listed in the first column of the table: this list is simply to establish the relationship between the different versions of the OAS. As such, the first column represents the OAS in its most expanded version, by including sections that probably did not belong to the original treatise but became embedded in the Hebrew, the Arabic, or the Latin version during the history of the work’s transmission.

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Appendix 4. Latin Manuscripts of On Alums and Salts

In the current state of our knowledge, seven Latin manuscripts that preserve the OAS are known. These manuscripts represent at least two different translations made from the Arabic text by different translators at different times. While we know that the translator of one of these two versions was Gerard of Cremona, the authorship and chronological setting of the second is unknown. A critical edition and English translation of the Latin OAS were presented in Catherine Arbuthnott’s doctoral thesis and awaits publication.⁵¹⁶

The following manuscripts constitute the extant evidence of the Latin translations of the OAS:

1. MS 4 Qq A 10, Palermo, Biblioteca Comunale (aka ‘Codex Speciale’), beginning of the XIV century, parchment, fols. 233r-244v. The manuscript is written in minute but clear handwriting and preserves a collection of some of the most famous medieval alchemical works.⁵¹⁷ Carini proposed dating the manuscript between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries on the basis of the fact that in some of the treatises Thomas Aquinas is mentioned as a friar or as consecrated, while in others he is defined as a saint. Carini moreover hypothesizes that the compiler of the codex might be a certain Friar Domenico of the San Procolo monastery in Bologna, who is considered by Carini the owner of most of the manuscripts anthologised in the Palermitan codex.⁵¹⁸ The OAS has the title Sermo de aluminibus et salibus, quae in haec arte necessaria existunt. A marginal note offers a peculiar alternative title: Alii intitulant hunc ita: Incipit liber Ypocratis et Galieni. The incipit of the OAS in this manuscript reads: Scias quod atramenti sunt genera multa and the work is concluded by the explicit aqua ergo ecsir indiget illa aqua intellige. Explicit liber. Deo gratias. Carini provides an inventory of the contents of the Palermo manuscript, where the OAS is listed as number 34, but does not provide any indication of foliation.⁵¹⁹ The codex used to be part of the collection of books and manuscripts of the family Speciale from Nicosia, one of the most illustrious and ancient Sicilian families. Famous members of this family include Niccolò Speciale, viceroy of the kingdom between 1423 and 1432; another Niccolò, who authored eight books on Sicilian history; and Pietro Speciale, magistrate of Palermo until 1469. Between 27 and 30 May 1860, during the insurrection that led to the end of the Bourbon control over the city and eventually to the unification of Sicily with the newly-born Italian kingdom, the Palermitan palace of the brothers Gaetano and Pietro Speciale was pillaged by solders and civilians, and a large part of their manuscript collection was lost or destroyed. Luckily, the ‘Speciale’ codex survived this fate; in 1872 Carini wrote that the codex was on the market and hoped it would be bought by Palermo’s Municipal Library. This happened in 1873. In his description of this witness of the OAS, Carini provides a list of the section headings that shows that the structure of this version of the OAS coincides with the order of topics found in the Arabic Sprenger MS 1908 and the Hebrew MS Orient. 514; the same structure was also preserved in Steele’s 1929 edition.

2. MS Lat. 6514, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, XIV-XV century, parchment, fols. 125r-128v.The manuscript appears to preserve the Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona. The author of the OAS is here called ‘Bubacher Magumet fil. Ceceri Arrasi,’ and this indication was crucial for the circulation of the work and its fame as an original work by al-Rāzī. Berthelot’s study of the manuscript is marred by some errors. For example, he maintained that the explicit of the OAS reads “explicit liber fratris Rogeri Bachonis.”⁵²⁰ This explicit actually belongs to Bacon’s treatise Breve breviarium, but Berthelot did not notice that the last four folios of the OAS, where the genuine explicit of the treatise and the beginning of Bacon’s Breviarium would have been found, had fallen out from the manuscript.⁵²¹ Berthelot’s confusion might have been encouraged by the similarity of topics between the OAS and the Breve breviarium which was strongly influenced by the pseudo-Avicennian De Anima.⁵²² Berthelot also argues that the quotations of the OAS that appear in Vincent of Beauvais’ works cannot be identified (apart from a single case) in the Parisian manuscript; this assertion was disproved by Steele who argued that those sections are indeed present and that at least six of them are found in this manuscript, but escaped Berthelot’s eye.

3. MS Digby 119, Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, XIV century, parchment, fols. 167v-175v. A marginal note, possibly in the hand of John Dee, provides the title Liber rationum super corpora, spiritus, sales et atramenta.⁵²³

4. MS Corpus Christi Coll. 125, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, XIV century, parchment, fols. 110r-117r. The first folio of the manuscript preserves a note of possession dated 1592: Liber Thomas Sprot. de librari. Sancti Agustini Canonorum. The OAS is titled Liber salium et alluminibus alchemiae and ends with the explicit: et sic suscipit duriciam er albedinem donec veniati in quantitate lune et sic erit optimum in operacione transmutacionis et ad faciendum magnum cumulum azimum id est salem.⁵²⁴

5. MS El. q. 20, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Jena, XIV century, parchment, fols 29r-41v.⁵²⁵ The incipit of the OAS reads: “Incipit Liber Lumen Luminum. Atramentorum genera sicut [sic?] multa et eius minere sunt inuente.”

6. MS 474 (830), Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, XV century, parchment, fols. 35r-48v. The manuscript, which is part of the collection of Count Caprara, is described in detail in the catalogue of the Latin codices of the library published by Lodovico Frati.⁵²⁶ The OAS opens with the incipit: Sermo de aluminibus et salibus et atramentis et alii quae in hac arte necessari existunt ad complementum eleizir.

7. MS Arundel 164, London, British Library, XV century, paper, fols. 167v-175v. The text of the OAS is here surrounded by works attributed to the Latin Geber; it is titled Tractatus de aluminibus et salibus et primo de atramento and ends with the explicit: scias ergo statione eius cum aqua regi rubei aliquotiens est enim ultimum ergo occulta ipsum et age cum eo et prosperaberis. Explicit secretum philosophiae secretissimum. Steele used this manuscript as a counterpart to the Parisian manuscript 6514 for preparing his edition.

Two other manuscripts were originally believed to preserve Latin versions of the OAS, given that their titles and incipits closely resemble those of the Latin OAS; close analysis of the texts they preserve identified them as a different alchemical work:

A. MS 1400 (III), Cambridge, Trinity College, XV-XVI century, fols. 75v-81r. The treatise Liber Saturni et aluminum (whose title could easily have been the result of a copyist’s error for Liber salium et aluminum) opens with an incipit closely resembling that of the OAS: Salium autem sunt genera multa. Sal armoniacus, sal communis et marinus. Et hic duo sunt genera vel species. Nam grossior et nigrior prevalent, Sal gemme qui est coloris cristallini, Sal nitri. Sal vitri. Sal petre. Sal alkali. Sal calcis. Sal cineris. Sal urine. Urin. Sal enim omnis participat in caliditate. The explicit reads: uterusque cum alio sine aliquo addito et interdum expedit exponere salem et ad diversitatem operis intenti diversatur sal. Explicit. ⁵²⁷ Ruska analysed this manuscript for his edition of the Latin OAS and discarded it as a work different from the OAS.

B. MS No. Hu 1051, San Marino (CA), Henry E. Huntington Library, XV–XVI century, fols. 110v-23v. The codex is an alchemical multiple-text manuscript in both Latin and English by at least thirteen different copyists who collected material attributed to major alchemical (and not strictly alchemical) authorities from Aristotle to the fifteenth century.⁵²⁸ The treatise, that may be confused with another translation of the OAS, opens with Incipit de salibus et eorum preparacione. Salium autem multa sunt genera, scilicet sal armoniacum, sal gemme, sal communis, sal marinus, et huius [nigrior] prevalent sal nitri, sal vitri, sal petre, sal alkali, sal calcis, sal cineris et sal urine. This incipit appears to reproduce the opening of the treatise on salts preserved in the Trinity College manuscript (A) with some significant variants. The text does not represent another translation of the OAS, but rather an autonomous treatise upon which the Latin OAS may have exerted an influence.

The preliminary analysis of the extant witnesses of the Latin OAS led Arbuthnott to classify them in two distinct families: A, represented by MS Digby 119 and the text used in the John of Garland printed Compendium alchimiae, and family B, represented by the remaining five manuscript witnesses. The complex relationships between the two families and among the manuscripts that constitute them did not allow Arbuthnott to draw a solid stemma codicum and therefore her critical edition of the Latin OAS remains at times conjectural.

Appendix 5. Lexicon of Alchemical Terminology in the Arabic and Hebrew On Alums and Salts

A. Arabic-English

Table

B. Hebrew-English

Table

C. English-Arabic-Hebrew⁵²⁹

The following lexicon provides correspondences between the English translation of the OAS and the Arabic and Hebrew versions of the text. It is intended as a tool to help readers navigate my translations, and to indicate the range of terminology employed in the different versions of the work. It should however be noted that establishing a precise, one-to-one correspondence between Arabic and Hebrew terms is a risky endeavour at the best of times, and often impossible. Since these two manuscripts are not derived from a common exemplar, and nor is one a translation of the other, the correspondences between terms should be treated as approximate. Rather, the terminology reflects the whole history of a rich manuscript tradition that is, in large part, unknown to us.

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INDEX OF NAMES OF PERSONS, PLACES, AND TITLES OF WORKS

‘Abbasid dynasty	=	S22, S23, S24
Al-Ṭuġrā’ī, Mu’ayyid al-Dīn Abū Ismā‘īl	=	S11, S17, S18
Albert the Great	=	S36, S170
Amsterdam	=	S37
Andalusia / al-Andalus	=	S1, S11, S26, S47, S53, S103
Andara	=	S26, S53, S170, S171
Antonii de Abbacia epistola [sic] due de lapide philosophorum	=	S46
Antonius de Florentia	=	S46
Aristotle	=	S14, S15, S18, S36, S170, S180
Arnold of Villanova	=	S22, S36, S170
Bacon, Roger	=	S5, S7, S12, S36, S170, S178
Baghdad	=	S6
Balḥūn	=	S26, S53
Balīnūs (Apollonios of Tyana)	=	S115
Barmakid family	=	S24
Basel	=	S5
Ben Natan (or ben Nissim), Zeraḥ of Troki	=	S37
Ben Yiśra’el, Menašeh	=	S37
Ben Yulio (filius Gilgil Cordubensis/Inthuelis Cordubensis)	=	S10, S11, S101
Bern	=	S16
Book of the Flower Beds	=	S24, S67
Book of Qualities	=	S163
Book of the Seventy	=	S36, S127
Book on the Dissolution of the Five Spirits	=	S127
Borellius, Petrus / Borel, Pierre	=	S44, S46
Brescia	=	S43, S44, S45
Brescia Antica	=	S43
Calabria	=	S47
Christianos	=	S22
Codex Speciale	=	S4, S177
Commemoratio librorum	=	S6
Cordoba	=	S10, S11, S101
Cozzando, Leonardo	=	S43
Crete	=	S37
De futura, & sperata contra Turcos victoria, e sacris prophetiis, aliisque vaticiniis, prodigis & prognosticis desumptus	=	S43
De Triumphis Ecclesiae	=	S5
Dee, John	=	S12, S13, S178
Della Riviera, Cesare	=	S44
Della tramutazione metallica sogni tre	=	S43, S44, S45, S46
Delmedigo, Yosef Šelomoh	=	S37, S45
Doctrine of Democritus	=	S21, S22
Egypt	=	S1, S26, S36, S37, S71, S79, S93, S153, S169
Eulogium	=	S6
Florentinus de Valentia	=	S46
France	=	S5
Frankfurt	=	S37
Ǧa‘far al-Ṣādiq	=	S23
Ǧābir ibn Ḥayyān	=	S23, S24, S25, S35, S36, S63, S67, S101, S115, S119, S127, S129,S131, S151, S168, S169, S170
Galen	=	S4, S12
Galilei, Galileo	=	S37
Gerard of Cremona	=	S6, S7, S8, S9, S177, S178
Gherli, Fulvio	=	S44
Ḫālid ibn Yazīd	=	S25, S37, S63
Harūn al-Rašīd	=	S23
Heidelberg	=	S16
Hermes	=	S20, S35, S36, S105, S167, S170
Hippocrates	=	S4, S12
Historia di Brescia	=	S43
Huelva	=	S10
Ibn Ǧulǧul, Abū Dāwūd Sulaymān b. Ḥasan al-Andalusī	=	S11, S101
Ibn Sīnā, Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abdallāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī	=	S36, S170
Il Mondo magico degli eroi	=	S44
Iraq	=	S23, S26, S99, S161
Isidoro (of Seville?)	=	S83, S157
John of Garland	=	S5, S12, S14, S180
Kitāb al-Asrār	=	S10, S63
Kitāb al-ǧawhar al-naḍīr fī ṣinā‘at al-iksīr	=	S17, S18
Kitāb al-Muǧarradāt (Liber de spoliationibus / Liber denudatorum)	=	S24, S25, S63
Kitāb al-Zuhra	=	S36
Kitāb Ḥaqā’iq al-Istishhād	=	S18
Kitāb Muṣaḥḥaḥātinā naḥnu	=	S35, S127, S129
Kufa	=	S23
Kutub al-Mawāzīn	=	S24
Kitāb Sirr al-Asrār	=	S10
Labla insula	=	S10
Liber de compositione alchimiae	=	S25
Liber divinitatis	=	S6
Liber Perfecti Magisterii Rhasei	=	S8
Liber Raxis qui dicitur Lumen Luminum Magnum / Liber luminis luminum	=	S6, S8, S12, S179
Liber Urad	=	S24
Lithuania	=	S37
Malik Shāh	=	S18
Al-Maqqarī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Tilmisānī	=	S10
Mary the Jew	=	S36, S169
Maryanus/Morienus	=	S25
Mas‘ūd ibn Muḥammad (Muḥammad III)	=	S18
Merici, Angela	=	S45
Metamorfosi metallico et humano	=	S45
Möglin, Daniel	=	S46
Moses Maimonides	=	S36, S170
Muḥammad I Tapar	=	S18
Al-Nadīm, Abū al-Faraǧ Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq	=	S24, S25, S35
Nazari, Giovanni Battista	=	S43, S44, S45, S46, S151, S157
Neerim	=	S10
Niebla	=	S10
One Hundred and Twelve Books	=	S24, S36, S127
Opus Maius	=	S12
Opus Minus	=	S5, S7, S12
Oxford	=	S5, S12, S178
Padua	=	S37, S46
Persia	=	S6
Prague	=	S37
Proteo metallico	=	S44
Pseudo-Geber	=	S22, S179
Pseudo-Raymond Lull	=	S22, S115
Pythagoras	=	S83, S157
Al-Qazwīnī, Abū Yaḥyā Zakarīyā’ ibn Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd	=	S10
Quattrami, Evangelista	=	S44
Al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakarīyā’ (Rasis/Bubacher Magument fil. Ceceri Arrasi/Razi/Raxis/Rhasis)	=	S6, S7, S9, S10, S12, S169
Risālat Maryanus al-rāhib al-ḥākim li-’l-amīr Ḫālid ibn Yazīd	=	S25
Robert of Chester	=	S25
Rodengo Saiano	=	S43
Rosa Florescens, contra F.G. Menapi calumnias	=	S46
Sant’Antonino	=	S46
Santa Mariyya (Šantamariyya)	=	S26, S53
Sefer Elim	=	S37, S45, S170
Sefer ha-Avanim	=	S37
Sefer Ha-Haṣṣalah	=	S36
Sefer ha-Levanah	=	S36
Sefer Ma’mar ha-Neḥošet	=	S36
Sefer Sod ha-Sodot	=	S36
Seville / Sevilla	=	S10, S14, S101
Sicily	=	S47, S177
Al-Simīrumī, Kamāl al-Mulk	=	S18
Spain	=	S1, S9, S10, S11, S15, S101, S103
Speculum doctrinale	=	S7, S8
Speculum maius	=	S7
Speculum naturale	=	S7, S8
Sprenger, Aloys	=	S16
Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ wa-’l-ḥukamā’	=	S11
The Book of Archelaos	=	S36
Thomas Aquinas	=	S36, S170, S177
Toledo	=	S11, S153
Toulouse	=	S5
Tractatus Orti	=	S24
Trattato di Casa Lodrona	=	S43
Turkey	=	S37
Tus	=	S23
Vera dichiarazione	=	S44
Vilna	=	S37
Vincent of Beauvais	=	S4, S7, S8, S9, S10, S12, S178
Vita	=	S6
Zosimus of Panopolis	=	S36

Notes

1 For an engaging overview of the history of alchemy from antiquity to modern times, see Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). For a general survey on the sources and main developments of alchemy in the Arabo-Islamic world, see George Anawati “L’alchimie arabe,” in Histoire des sciences arabes, ed. Roshdi Rashed, 3 vols. (Paris: Seuil 1997), III, 111–41.

2 These works include the Mappae Clavicula, Compositiones Lucenses, and Liber Ignium.

3 The period of cultural efflorescence determined by the translation of Arabic philosophical and scientific works has been described as the “twelfth-century Renaissance”: Charles H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927). On the survival and assimilation Greek scientific culture in medieval Islamic thought, see Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (Oxford: Routledge, 1998).

4 My preliminary studies on the On Alums and Salts have appeared in two articles: Gabriele Ferrario, “Il Libro degli allumi e dei sali: status quaestionis e prospettive di studio,” Henoch 26 (2004): 275–96 and Gabriele Ferrario, “Origins and Transmission of the Liber de aluminibus et salibus,” in Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chymistry, ed. L. Principe (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2007), 137–48.

5 On Decknamen in medieval Arabic alchemy, see Alfred Siggel, Decknamen in der arabischen alchemistischen Literatur (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1951).

6 Robert Steele, “Practical Chemistry in the 12th Century. Rasis de aluminibus et salibus,” Isis 12 (1929): 10–49.

7 Paul Kraus, “Julius Ruska. Festschrift zum 70. Geburstag,” Osiris 5 (1938): 4–40.

8 Isidoro Carini, Sulle scienze occulte nel Medio Evo e sopra un codice della famiglia Speciale (Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1983; reprint of Palermo: Perino, 1872).

9 Carini’s other goal in writing the monograph was to provide information on the contents of the “Codex Speciale” to bring the manuscript to the attention of the Municipal Library of Palermo, which Carini hoped would purchase it. He dedicated the book to Salvatore Cusa, then professor of palaeography with responsibility for teaching the Arabic language in Palermo. Carini’s wish became reality and the “Speciale codex” is now held at the Biblioteca Comunale di Palermo (MS 4 Qq A 10). For a description of the codex and its history, see below, Appendix 4.

10 Carini, Sulle scienze occulte, 27: “un trattato, che si aggiudica ad Ippocrate ed a Galeno Sermo de aluminibus et salibus que in hac arte necessaria sunt colla nota Aliqui intitulant hunc ita. Incipit liber ypocratis et galieni.” The second part of Carini’s monograph, the Elenco dei trattati e dei capitoli contenuti nel Codice Speciale, is a straightforward index of the content of the Speciale manuscript. Two pages of this section are devoted to a list of the Latin headings of the chapters of the OAS as preserved in the Speciale manuscript: Carini, Sulle scienze occulte, XIV–XV.

11 Marcellin P. E. Berthelot, La chimie au Moyen Âge, 3 vols. (Osnabrück-Amsterdam: Zeller-Philo Press, 1967; reprint of first ed. Paris, 1893), I, 317–19: “C’est un écrit essentiellement pratique, et où se trouvent des recettes traitant fréquemment les mêmes sujets que celles des opuscules précédents.”

12 For the use of the OAS in medieval encyclopaedias, see below, Appendix 4.

13 Steele, “Practical Chemistry.”

14 Steele, “Practical Chemistry,” 12. Steele enriched his article with a “Glossarial Index” that marks the occurrences of alchemical technical terms in the treatise and offers an English translation and brief explanation of this terminology. He notes the dependence of his glossary on Lucien Leclerc, Traité des Simples par Ibn el-Beïthar. Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, vols. XXIII, XXV, XXVI (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883).

15 Julius Ruska, Das Buch der Alaune und Salze: ein Grundwerk der Spätlateinischer Alchemie (Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1935).

16 John of Garland (Lat. Johannes Garlandius, d. 1252), an Englishman educated at Oxford, moved after 1202 to France and worked at the University of Toulouse. He authored the De Triumphis Ecclesiae, an extensive poem where the victories of the church over heretics at home and infidels abroad are praised, edited in Thomas Wright, ed., De Triumphis Ecclesiae Johannis de Garlandia (London: Nichols, 1856). A number of treatises on grammar, maths and music are also attributed to John of Garland.

17 For a detailed description of MS Sprenger 1908, see below, § 4.

18 Four years later, Ruska returned to the debated problem of the paternity of the OAS in an article devoted to the pseudepigraphic writings attributed to al-Rāzī: Julius Ruska, “Pseudoepigraphe Rasis-Schriften,” Osiris 7 (1939); on the OAS in particular, see 39–40.

19 Robert Patai, The Jewish Alchemists. A History and Source Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994), 119–24 (on the Hebrew OAS); 407–16 (on the miscellaneous manuscript that contains the OAS). For a detailed description of MS Orient. Oct. 514, see below, § 5.

20 Michela Pereira, Alchimia. I testi della tradizione occidentale (Milan: Mondadori 2006), 272–305. Pinella Travaglia edited the Arabic contributions to this anthology.

21 Catherine J. Arbuthnott, “Pseudo-Razi De aluminibus et salibus: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Latin Translation with Notes on the Chemical Procedures” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 2002).

22 On this manuscript and the other Latin witnesses of the OAS, see below, Appendix 4.

23 On the original alchemical works by al-Rāzī, see Julius Ruska, “Al-Razi (Rhazes) als Chemiker,” Zeitschrift für Angewandte Chemie 35 (1922): 719–24; Julius Ruska, “Al-Razi als Bahnbrecher einer neuer Chemie,” Deutsche Literatur-Zeitung 44 (1923): 117–24; Rudolf Winderlich, “Ruska’s Researches on the Alchemy of Al-Razi,” Journal of Chemical Education 13 (1936): 313–15; Gerard Heym, “Al-Razi and Alchemy,” Ambix 1 (1938): 184–91; James R. Partington, “The Chemistry of Al-Razi,” Ambix 1 (1938): 192–96.

24 The critical edition of Gerard’s Vita, Eulogium, and Commemoratio and their English translations was published in Charles Burnett, “The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the 12th Century,” Science in Context 14 (2001): 249–88. The reference to the OAS among Gerard’s translations is on 280 (n. 65).

25 The most complete and up-to-date study of the alchemical sources used by Vincent of Beauvais is Sébastien Moureau, “Les sources alchimiques de Vincent de Beauvais,” Spicae. Cahiers de l’Atelier Vincent de Beauvais (New Series) 2 (2012): 5–118; the discussion on the OAS is found on 21–24, and Vincent’s quotations on 65–72. My notes here are based on Moureau’s exhaustive work. Ruska, Das Buch, 14, and Steele, “Practical Chemistry,” 12, also provide tables of the correspondences between sections of the OAS and the chapters in Vincent’s Specula in which they are quoted.

26 Moureau, “Les sources,” 23.

27 I am here referring to the foliation of the Douai edition of the Speculum.

28 Steele, “Practical Chemistry,” 12.

29 Ferdinand Hoefer, Histoire de la chimie depuis les temps les plus reculées jusqu’a notre époque, 2 vols (Paris: Hachette, 1842–43), I, 323–25: “Rien n’indique que les trois écrits de Rhasès soient apocryphes. Il n’y aurait aucune prevue solide à faire valoir contre leur authenticité.”

30 Hermann Kopp, Ansichten über die Aufgabe der Chemie und über die Grundbestandtheile der Körper bei den bedeutenderen Chemikern (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875), 54–55, n. 63.

31 Steele, “Practical Chemistry,” 10. I here preserve Steele’s non-scientific transliteration.

32 George S.A. Ranking, “The Life and Work of Rhazes,” Proceedings of the XVII^th International Congress of Medicine (1913), Section of the History of Medicine (Oxford, 1914), 246–68; reprinted in Fuat Sezgin, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (d. 313/925): Texts and Studies (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1996).

33 Dorothea W. Singer, Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in Great Britain and Ireland, 3 vols. (Brussels: Lamertin, 1928), I, 107–8.

34 Ruska, Das Buch, 15–18.

35 Julius Ruska, “Übersetzung und Bearbeitung von al-Razi’s Buch Geheimnis der Geheimnisse,” in Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften IV (Berlin: Springer, 1935), 153–238. An English translation of this work was made based on Ruska’s German translation: Gail Marlow Taylor, The Alchemy of Al-Razi. A Translation of the Book of Secrets (Self-published and printed, 2014).

36 For the geographical names in the Arabic OAS, see below, § 4.3.

37 Miguel Asin Palacios, “Notes to R. Steele’s Edition of Rasis de aluminibus et salibus,” Isis 13 (1929–30): 358–9.

38 For al-Qazwīnī, see Tadeusz Lewicki, “Al-Ḳazwīnī,” in Encyclopédie de l’Islam 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1960–96), IV, 898–900, and Julius Ruska, “Kazwini-Studien,” Der Islam 4 (1913): 14–66; 236–62. For the passage on Niebla, see al-Qazwīnī, Géographie/Kosmographie: Aṯār al-Bilād, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterischen Buchhandlung, 1848), 372 (quoted by Asin Palacios).

39 Al-Maqqarī, Analectes sur l’histoire et la littérature des Arabes d’Espagne, eds. Reinhart P. A. Dozy, Gustave Dugat, Ludolf Krehl, and William Wright (Leiden: Brill, 1855–61), I, 123 (quoted in Asin Palacios). On al-Maqqarī, see Évariste Lévi-Provençal and Charles Pellat, “Al-Maḳḳarī,” in Encyclopédie de l’Islam 2, VI, 170–2.

40 Ibn Ǧulǧul, Les generations du médicins et des sages, ed. Fu’ād Sayyid (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1996; reprint of the edition Al-Qāhira, 1955). On Ibn Ǧulǧul, see Albert Dietrich, “Ibn Djuldjul,” in Encyclopédie de l’Islam 2, III, 778–79.

41 On al-Ṭuġrā’ī and its relevance to the Arabic manuscript of the OAS, see below, 4.1.

42 For an overview of the Latin tradition of the OAS, see below, Appendix 4.

43 These further quotations are found at pp. 376, 379, 380, 381, 382 in Steele’s edition: Roger Bacon, Opera hactenus inedita. Opus Minus, Opus Tertium, Compendium Philosophiae (London: J. S. Brewer, 1859).

44 Ruska, Das Buch, 16, suggests that John Dee might have been the owner of this manuscript. Dee (1527–1609) was a prominent English astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, and philosopher, who at various times received patronage from Queen Elisabeth I. Dee owned one of the largest private libraries of his time, which was partly catalogued by Dee himself: see Julian Roberts and Andrew G. Watson, John Dee’s Library Catalogue (London: Bibliographical Society, 1990).

45 Fol. 19r. For a detailed description of the Hebrew manuscript and its contents, see below, § 5.

46 On the difficulty of using these terms, see William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake,” Early Science and Medicine 3 (1998): 32–65.

47 Lawrence Principe and Jennifer Rampling have already attempted to reconstruct several recipes from the OAS: see Jennifer M. Rampling, “How to Sublime Mercury: Reading Like a Philosopher in Medieval Europe,” The Recipes Project (24 May 2018), https://recipes.hypotheses.org/10663. For an overview of reconstruction as a methodology, as well as several valuable case studies, see Hjalmar Fors, Lawrence M. Principe, and H. Otto Sibum, eds., “From the Library to the Laboratory and Back Again: Experiments as a Tool for Historians of Science,” Ambix 63.2 (2017). For more recent reflections, see Sven Dupré, Anna Harris, et al., eds., Reconstruction, Replication and Re-enactment in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020).

48 On the structure of texts and collections of recipes as criteria of authority, see Chiara Crisciani and Jole Agrimi, “Per una ricerca su experimentum-experimenta: riflessione epistemologica e tradizione medica,” in Presenza del lessico greco e latino nelle lingue contemporanee, eds. Pietro Janni and Innocenzo Mazzini (Macerata: Facoltà di Lettere e filosofia dell’Università di Macerata, 1990): 9–49; Chiara Crisciani, “Fatti, teorie, ‘narratio’ e i malati a corte. Note su empirismo e medicina nel Tardo Medioevo,” Quaderni di Studi Storici 108 (2001): 695–717.

49 For a table of correspondences between the sections of the OAS in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin versions of the OAS, see Appendix 3.

50 The mercury-sulphur theory derives from the Aristotelian theory of exhalations and was introduced in the Islamic East during the Middle Ages. According to this theory, all metals are constituted by a mixture of two exhalations, mercury and sulphur, in different proportions, degrees of purity, and environmental conditions. See John Norris, “The Mineral Exhalation Theory of Metallogenesis in Pre-Modern Mineral Science,” Ambix 53 (2006): 43–65; Matteo Martelli, Sébastien Moureau, and Jennifer Rampling, “Theory and Concepts: The Shared Heritage of Byzantine, Arabo-Muslim, and Latin Alchemy,” in A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Middle Ages, ed. Charles Burnett and Sébastien Moureau (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 18–23.

51 Works on the production of coloured glass and precious stones are included in the Byzantine collections of Greek alchemists and attributed to crucial figures of the alchemical canon, like (Pseudo-)Democritus. See Matteo Martelli, The Four Books of Pseudo-Democritus (“Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry” 1) (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2013), 1–69, esp. on 23.

52 High-quality digital images of MS Sprenger 1908 are available at the STABI Digitale Sammlungen website: https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht?PPN=PPN892788259&PHYSID=PHYS_0005 (accessed 10 February 2022). The manuscript is listed as number 10361 in Wilhelm Ahlwardt’s catalogue and is described in detail in Alfred Siggel’s survey of the Arabic alchemical manuscripts in the Staatsbibliothek: Wilhelm Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss der arabischen Handschriften der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, 10 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1887–1889), VIII, 614–5; Alfred Siggel, Katalog der arabischen alchemistischen Handschriften Deutschlands: v. I: Handschriften der öffentlichen wissenschaftlichen Bibliothek – früher Staatsbibliothek Berlin (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1949), 139–44.

53 Thomas Schmieder-Jappe, Die Sammlung der orientalischen Handschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2004), 13.

54 The most extensive notes are at fols. 13v, 14r, 15v, 16v, 17v, 18v, 20r, 21v, 22v, 42v, 43v, and 46v.

55 Examples of this feature can be seen on fols. 14v, 15r, 16r, 25r, 30r, and 33r.

56 See Gustav Weil and Georges S. Colin, “Abdjad,” in Encyclopédie de l’Islam 2, 97–8. The abjad system is used very rarely nowadays, mostly when paginating book prefaces and indexes, but was extensively employed throughout the premodern period for the production of astrolabes and talismans, for divinatory purposes, and when composing chronograms.

57 MS Sprenger 1908, fol. 1v.

58 Siggel, Katalog, 142.

59 On al-Ṭuġrā’ī, see François C. De Blois, “Al-Ṭughrā‘ī,” in Encyclopédie de l’Islam. Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–1996), X, 643–44.

60 On Ibn Sīnā’s opinion on the philosophical impossibility of transmutation and its transmission as Book IV of Aristotle’s Meteorologica in the Middle Ages, see Chiara Crisciani, “Meteore, IV: ‘Sciant artifices alchimie,’” in Edizioni, traduzioni e tradizioni filosofiche, ed. Luca Bianchi, Onorato Grassi, and Cecilia Panti (Canterano RM: Gioacchino Onorati, 2017), 353–67.

61 Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 229–31; 252–3; Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schriftums (Leiden: Brill, 1971), IV.

62 See, for example, Maurice Sharbil, Mawsu‘a al-Muktashifīn wa-al-Mukhtari‘īn (Bayrūt: Dār Al-Kutub Al-‘Ilmiyya, 1991), 247 [Arabic]; Mustafa al-Jiwasī, Mawsu‘a ‘ulamā’ al-‘arab wa-al-muslimīn wa-a‘lāmihim (‘Amman: Dār Asmā’ li-nashr wa-al-tawzī,’ s.d.), 232 [Arabic]. It is difficult to determine whether these publications are referring to the very same MS Sprenger 1908 or are based on other evidence.

63 For a complete list of the headings and contents of the Arabic manuscript, see Appendix 1.

64 Section numbers refer to the list of topics presented in Appendix 1.

65 I have devoted two articles to this lexicon: Gabriele Ferrario, “Understanding the Language of Alchemy: The Medieval Arabic Alchemical Lexicon in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS Sprenger 1908,” Digital Proceedings of the First Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age 1.1 (2009): Article 2 (online at: http://repository.upenn.edu/ljsproceedings/vol1/iss1/2); Gabriele Ferrario, “An Arabic Dictionary of Technical Alchemical Terms: MS Sprenger 1908 of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (fols. 3r-6r),” Ambix 56 (2009): 36–48. A complete translation and study of this lexicon is due to appear in an anthology of alchemical texts curated by members of the AlchemEast ERC project based at the University of Bologna and edited by Matteo Martelli.

66 While all other numerals in the passage are expressed in figures, this is spelled out.

67 Siyyār can also be used for indicating planets on account of their perpetual circular motion.

68 The passage expresses the numeral both in figures and as a word.

69 The numeration of the names for copper begins only with the second of the names listed, leaving out the name for the planet Venus.

70 As above, the numeration does not begin with the first synonym listed.

71 The name Zāwūsh is repeated twice in the passage.

72 ‘anān (clouds) or ‘inān (reins).

73 The number eight is used twice in the passage, thereby causing an error in the numeration.

74 Depending on the vocalization, this term can assume slightly different meanings: Qawām, straightness, frame, figure, build, strength; qawwām, manager, director, caretaker, keeper, custodian, guardian; qiwwām, support, stay, basis, foundation, subsistence, livelihood.

75 The half crescent has its “belly” upwards in the manuscript.

76 Berthelot, La Chimie, II: I-XII (discussion); 71–74 (edition); 156–61 (translation).

77 Berthelot, La Chimie, XII: “une compilation de procédés et recettes alchimiques, traduites du grec vers le VII^e, le VIII^e ou le IX^e siècle […]. Un certain nombre de ces recettes ont passé d’ailleurs, à peu près sans changement, jusque chez les auteurs alchimistes latins du XIII^e siècle.” On the alchemical works of Pseudo-Democritus, see Matteo Martelli, Pseudo-Democrito, Scritti alchemici, con il commentario di Sinesio. Edizione critica del testo greco, traduzione e commento (Milan-Paris: Arché-SÉHA 2011); Martelli, The Four Books.

78 On Syriac as an intermediary language in the translations from Greek into Arabic, see Henri Hugonnard-Roche, “Les traductions du grec au syriaque et du syriaque à l'arabe,” in Rencontres de cultures dans la philosophie médiévale. Traductions et traducteurs de l’antiquité tardive au XIV^e siècle, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse and Marta M. Fattori (Louvain-la-Neuve—Cassino: Institut d’études médiévales, 1990), 131–48.

79 This refers to the portion of British Library, MS Egerton 709 that preserves an alchemical lexicon that is also found in MS Sprenger 1908.

80 Berthelot, La Chimie, XVII: “Les écrits arabes originaux étaient sans doute antérieurs d’un siècle ou deux [in comparison to the first Latin translations of Arabic alchemical works]: ce qui nous reporterait du IX^e au XI^e siècle, pour la rédaction originelle des articles de la seconde partie de l’Alchimie syriaque … En tout cas, la composition de cette seconde partie est plus moderne que celle des écrits du Chrétien, de l’Anonyme et de la Doctrine de Démocrite; mais elle est plus ancienne que celle du faux Géber latin, d’Arnaud de Villeneuve et du faux Raymond Lulle.”

81 The concept of “practical exegesis” introduced by Jennifer M. Rampling, “Transmuting Sericon: Alchemy as ‘Practical Exegesis’ in Early Modern England,” Osiris 29 (2014): 19–34, and subsequently in Rampling, The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1400–1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), is extremely useful for understanding the relationship between authority and innovation in alchemy both in early modern England and more generally.

82 Ǧābir’s name is often transliterated as Jābir in anglophone publications. I use the scientific transliteration of the name Ǧābir throughout the book, but employ the simplified spelling of the adjective “Jabirian,” e.g. the Jabirian corpus. The main studies on Ǧābir were conducted by Paul Kraus in the first half of the twentieth century: Paul Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān. Textes choisis (Paris/Al-Qāhira: Maisonneuve/El-Khandgi, 1935); Paul Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān. Contribution à l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam, 2 vols. (Al-Qāhira: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale,1942–43; repr. Paris: Le Belles Lettres, 1988). Other works attributed to Ǧābir were published in Eric J. Holmyard, The Arabic Works of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Paris: Geuthner, 1928); Pierre Lory, Tadbīr al-iksīr al-a‘ẓam – L’elaboration de l’elixir supreme (Damas: Institut Français de Damas, 1998); Pierre Lory, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān. Dix traités d’alchimie. Le dix premiers traités du ‘Livre de soixantedix’ (Paris: Sindbad, 1983). The identity, dating, and the very existence of the alchemist Ǧābir ibn Ḥayyān have been at the centre of a lively scholarly discussion. Kraus maintains that “Ǧābir” should be considered as a collective name for a group of scholars of Shīʿī persuasion active around the ninth century. Although Kraus’ hypothesis has been variously criticised – e.g. by Syed Nomanul Haq, Names, Natures and Things. The Alchemist Jābir ibn Ḥayyān and his Kitāb al-Aḥjār (New York: Springer, 1994), 3–32, who maintains the existence of a single alchemist called Ǧābir, who flourished in the eighth century and composed all the books that bear his name—it still remains the most plausible. Thijs Delva, “The Abbasid Activist Ḥayyān al-ʿAṭṭār as the Father of Jābir b. Ḥayyān: An Influential Hypothesis Revisited,” Journal of Abbasid Studies 4 (2017): 35–61, presents important new findings that further problematise the question of Ǧābir’s biography and historicity. The most recent and complete discussion of Ǧābir, his works and the status of the Jabirian question is in Regula Forster, “Jābir ibn Ḥayyān,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam 3, ed. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2017), 91–97.

83 Al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Gustav L. Flügel, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Vogel, 1871–1872), II, 421; see also the English translation, Al-Nadīm, The Fihrist of Al-Nadīm. A Tenth Century Survey of Muslim Culture, ed. Bayard Dodge, 2 vols. (New York/London: Columbia University Press, 1970), II, 857. Paul Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, 30–31.

84 Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, I, 31.

85 Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, I, 118–9. A Kitāb al-riyāḍ is also mentioned among Ǧābir’s works by al-Nadīm, Fihrist, II, 423; see Dodge, The Fihrist, II, 862.

86 Jabirian alchemy, at least in the later stages of its development, relies on the assumption that the Arabic letters that constitute the names of substances, as well as the position of these letters in the name itself, carry information on the qualitative nature of the substance. The theory of the balance instructs how to calculate the proportions of the elements within a substance and thereby understand which elements should be added or subtracted in order to perfect the said substance. See Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, II, 187–303.

87 The traditional (and mostly legendary) narrative of the introduction of alchemy to the Arabo-Islamic world and the role of Ḫālid ibn Yazīd in this process is related in al-Nadīm, Fihrist, II, 419; see Dodge, The Fihrist, 850.

88 The historicity of this narrative has been widely questioned by numerous scholars, since it would imply that translations from Greek into Arabic had already started in the late seventh to early tenth century. The story was strongly criticized by Julius Ruska, Arabische Alchemisten I. Chālid ibn Jazid ibn Mu‘āwija (Heildelberg: Akten der von-Portheim-Stiftung 6, 1924). See also Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 192–5, and Ullmann, “Ḫālid ibn Yazīd und Alchemie: Eine Legende,” Der Islam 55 (1978): 181–218, reprinted in Aufsätze zur arabischen Rezeption der griechischen Medizin und Naturwissenschaften, ed. Rüdiger Arnzen (Boston/Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 334–70.

89 An edition of the Latin translation of the Risāla together with an English translation are provided in Lee Stavenhagen, A Testament of Alchemy: Being the Revelations of Morienus to Khālid ibn Yazid (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1974). For the most up-to-date studies of the Risālat Maryānus, including an assessment of the status quaestionis on this work, see Marion Dapsens, “De la Risālat Maryānus au De compositione alchimiae: Quelques réflexions sur la tradition d’un traité d’alchimie,” Studia graeco-arabica 6 (2016): 121–40. Dapsens’ doctoral thesis, defended at the Université de Louvain-la-Neuve in October 2021, includes critical editions of the Arabic text of the Epistle and its Latin translation, together with a thorough study of both traditions. Its publication will represent a crucial contribution to our knowledge of the first steps of Arabic alchemy and of the introduction of alchemy to Latin Europe.

90 On the works by Ḫālid, see Marion Dapsens, “The Alchemical Works of Khālid ibn Yazīd b. Mu‘āwiya (d. c. 85/704),” Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques 75 (2021): 327–427. I am very grateful to Marion Dapsens for identifying this quotation in Ḫālid’s texts.

91 On the problematic attribution of the OAS, see above, § 2.

92 I have not been able to identify any Spanish place whose name could be connected to the Arabic Balḥūn. On the Spanish coast, there is nowadays a locality called Puerto Santa Maria, but I have detected no evidence to connect this site to the one mentioned in the manuscript. The Hebrew translation renders Balḥūn with the name Basilicon, in transliteration from the Italian language.

93 On sciences in the medieval Jewish context, see Tzvi Y. Langermann, The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishers, 1999); Gad Freudenthal, ed., Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Gabriele Ferrario and Maud Kozodoy, “Sciences and Medicine,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. 5: “The Middle Ages,” ed. Philip Ackerman-Lieberman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 825–63. On alchemy in particular, see Gabriele Ferrario, “Alchemy in the Jewish Context,” in A Cultural History of Chemistry, 87–91.

94 Paul Maas’s opinion resonates loudly for editors of codices unici: “Erstausgaben, die auf einem nicht leicht lesbaren codex unicus berühren, bietenselten eine abschließende Entzifferung” (“First editions of texts based on a codex unicus not easy to decipher rarely allow for a conclusive transcription”). Paul Maas, Textkritik, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1950), 17.

95 High-quality digital images of MS Orient. Oct. 514 are available at the STABI Digitale Sammlungen website: https://digital.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/werkansicht?PPN=PPN861640624&PHYSID=PHYS_0005 (accessed 17 February 2022).

96 Moritz Steinschneider, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Hildesheim/New York: G. Olms Verlag, 1980; reprint of Berlin: Buchdruckerei der König. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1878), II, 119–21.

97 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 119–24; 407–16. On the alchemical authorities mentioned in the Hebrew manuscript and their relevance for its dating, see below, 5.7. On translations from the Arabic language conducted in Europe, see Moritz Steinschneider, Die Europäischen Übersetzungen aus dem Arabischer bis mitte des 17 Jahrhunderts (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt 1956; repr. of the ed. Wien: Sitzungsberichte Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, phil.-hist. Klasse, 101, 1, 1905).

98 The discrepancy between the Hebrew and Arabic foliation is explained by a loss of folios. Moreover, the Arabic numeration mistakenly marks fol. 7 as fol. 6, causing a further discrepancy that carries on throughout the remainder of the manuscript.

99 On styles of catchword in Hebrew manuscripts, see Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology. Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1981; reprint with addenda and corrigenda of Paris: C.N.R.S., 1977), IV.

100 Steinschneider, Die Handschriften, II, 119.

101 If this interpretation is valid, we can assume that during the production of this manuscript, the copyist or translator had access to both Arabic and Latin texts. The Hebrew manuscript would therefore become a textual point of confluence of the Arabic (represented by the On Alums and Salts) and the Latin alchemical traditions that were circulating together in Europe at the time when this manuscript was produced.

102 Also noted by Steinschneider, Die Handschriften, 119; Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 407.

103 Examples of these blank sections are found at fols. 20r, 21r, 23v, 24v, 25v, 27r-v.

104 For a discussion of these notes in the Hebrew OAS and of their significance in regard to the destination of this manuscript, see below, § 5.5.

105 Congealment generally refers to the solidification of a liquid substance, while here neither arsenic nor sulphur are in a liquid state. While this passage could be simply employing the verb in an extensive meaning for describing the mixing of the two ingredients, the possibility of the corruption of this passage in the manuscript tradition should not be overlooked.

106 נ׳׳ל אם תשקה עמו זרניך מתוקו ותשמע ותתיך ותתיר . MS 514, fol. 8r. l. 11.

107 Most scholarship on visual imagery in alchemical manuscripts has focused on its figurative and allegorical content, especially within the Latin/European tradition: see, for instance, Barbara Obrist, Les débuts de l’imagerie alchimique (XIV^e–XV^e siècles) (Paris: Éditions le Sycomore, 1982). While the Arabic tradition has received less attention, see the important review article, Benjamin C. Hallum, “The Tome of Images: an Arabic Compilation of Texts by Zosimos of Panopolis and a Source of the Turba Philosophorum,” Ambix 56 (2009): 76–88. Both Arabic and Latin materials are examined in two recent studies in the same volume: Jennifer M. Rampling, “Art and Representation: The Alchemical Image in the Islamic and Christian Middle Ages,” in A Cultural History of Chemistry, 149–78; and (specifically on diagrams of apparatus) Nicolas Thomas and Sébastien Moureau, “Laboratories and Technology: Alchemical Equipment in the Middle Ages,” in A Cultural History of Chemistry, 49–70.

108 The most important collection of drawings of alchemical apparatus in a Hebrew manuscript is found in the so-called “Gaster manuscript” (British Library, MS Or 10289).

109 The meaning of the Hebrew word שמן describes greasy substances such as fat, grease, and oil.

110 On alchemical operations, see Sébastien Moureau and Nicolas Thomas, “Practice and Experiment: Alchemical Operations in the Middle Ages,” in A Cultural History of Chemistry, 35–47. On the distillation per descensum in particular, see Nicolas Thomas and Caroline Claude, “Les Vases à fond percé: pratique de la distillation per descensum au bas Moyen Âge en Île-de-France,” Revue Archéologique d’Île-de-France 4 (2011): 267–88.

111 For a complete list of the headings and contents of the Hebrew manuscript, see below, Appendix 2.

112 This work is listed as number 212 in Paul Kraus’s survey of the corpus. Kraus, Contribution, I, 67. Al-Nadīm, Fihrist, II, 422; Dodge, The Fihrist, II, 859.

113 A Kitāb al-Qamar is listed as number 50 in Kraus, Contribution, I, 27, where it is referred to as the forty-fourth of the One Hundred and Twelve Books. There is a clear discrepancy in the order of titles of Ǧābir’s works in Kraus’s assessment and in the text of our manuscript. The Book of the Moon is also mentioned in al-Nadīm, Kitāb, II, 422; see Dodge, The Fihrist, II, 861.

114 A Kitāb al-Ḫalās is listed as number 149 in Kraus, Contribution, I, 51, where it is referred to as the 27th of the Seventy Books.

115 See Kraus, Contribution, I, 74, where the Kitāb al-Zuhra is listed as n. 289.

116 Al-Nadīm, Kitāb, II, 419; Dodge, The Fihrist, II, 849.

117 Al-Nadīm, Kitāb, II, 417–18; Dodge, The Fihrist, II, 845–8.

118 Steinschneider, Die Handschriften, II, 121.

119 The foliation in Arabic numerals proceeds without interruption showing that the loss of this folio took place before the figures were added to the margins of the manuscript.

120 On these additions to the main text, see above, § 5.2.

121 Steinschneider, Die Handschriften, 119: “die Terminologie einer romanischen (italien. ?) Sprache entnommen ist.”

122 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 123.

123 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 123–24. It is worth noting that Patai considered the copyist of MS 514 to have been working from an existing Hebrew translation, rather than translating from an Arabic Vorlage, a view that is still a plausible possibility.

124 Jean-Pierre Rothschild, “Du Latin à l’Hébreu: quelques problèmes posés par des traductions médiévales,” in Rashi 1040–1990. Hommage à Ephraïm E. Urbach, ed. Gabrielle Sed-Rajna (Paris: Les Èditions du Cerf, 1993), 697. On the Hebrew translations of philosophical texts, see also Alfred L. Ivry, “Philosophical Translations From the Arabic in Hebrew During the Middle Ages,” in Rencontres de cultures dans la philosophie médiévale. Traductions et traducteurs de l’antiquité tardive au XIV^e siècle, ed. Jacqueline Hamesse and Marta Fattori (Louvain-La-Neuve-Cassino: Institut d’études médiévales, 1990), 167–86.

125 For the authorities mentioned in the Hebrew OAS, see below, § 5.7.

126 For a list of the words in transliteration from Arabic in the Hebrew OAS, see below, Appendix 5.

127 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 120.

128 Leonardo Cozzando, Libraria Bresciana (Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1974; reprint of Brescia: Rizzardi, 1694), 115–16: “Gio. Battista Nazari, con gran studio, e cura, procurò di rappresentar, e porre sotto gli occhi di Brescia nuova la forma di Brescia antica, le sue fabbriche, e giacitura de Templi. Il titolo è Brescia Antica, stampato più volte in Brescia, e finalmente ristampato per li Sabbi 1658. in 4. Di più scrisse anco: Della tramutazione metallica sogni tre. Primo della falsa tramutazione sofistica. Secondo della utile tramutazione detta reale usuale. Terzo della divina detta reale filosofica. In Brescia Ciotti 1599 in 4. e di più stampò un Trattato di Casa Lodrona. Inoltre scrisse l’Historia di Brescia divisa in quattro parti, & un discorso De futura, & sperata contra Turcos victoria, e sacris prophetiis, aliisque vaticiniis, prodigis & prognosticis desumptus.”

129 Vincenzo Peroni, Biblioteca Bresciana, 3 vols. (Sala Bolognese: A. Forni, 1968; reprint of Brescia, 1816–1823), II, 302: “versato nelle lettere, nelle scienze sacre e profane, nelle antichità, e diligente raccoglitore delle patrie memorie. Fu di maniere soave, e caro perciò ai letterati suoi coevi. Fioriva dopo la metà del secolo XVI.”

130 Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy, Histoire de la philosophie hermétique, 3 vols. (Paris: Constelier, 1742), I, 313–15; 474: “Jean Baptiste Nazari, Italien, plus grand Compilateur qu’habile Artiste: son livre est assez connu, mais il n’est pas comun.”

131 Evangelista Quattrami, La vera dichiarazione di tutte le metafore, similitudini e enimmi de gl’antichi Filosofi Alchimisti, tanto Caldei e Arabi, come Greci e Latini, usati da loro nella descrittione, e compositione dell’Oro potabili, Elissire della vita, Quinta essenza e Lapis filosofico … si mostra l’errore e ignoranza (per non dir l’inganno) di tutti gli Alchimisti moderni (Roma: V. Accolti 1587), 76–77: “Giovan Battista Nazzari nel sogno secondo dice per bocca del Conte di Treues, che il mercurio e solfo de’ filosofi sono una cosa istessa uniti insieme, e sono li due semi maschio e femina de’ metalli … ”

132 Cesare della Riviera, Il mondo magico de gli heroi (Milan: Arché, 1971; expanded reprint of the 2nd ed., Milan: Pietro Martire Locarni, 1605), 202: “Restino dunque i miseri Alchimisti, poiché così lor piace, erranti, e vagabondi nel confuso labirinto de i loro vani materiali da i quali, dopo la perdita dell’honore, del tempo, e delle proprie facoltà, null’altro raccolgono in guidardone della loro ostinazione, che quelle cinque F, date loro dal Nazari, che dicono: ‘Fame, freddo, fetor, fatica e fumo.”’

133 Fulvio Gherli, Proteo Metalico o sia delle trasformazioni superficiali de’Metalli e delle differenti preparazioni de’medesimi molto proprie per debellare i mali più atroci, che il Corpo Umano affliggono, e per iscoprire gl’inganni de’falsi Chimici (Venezia: G. Corona, 1721), 154, § “Delle varie trasformazioni del rame.” Gherli quotes from a poem found in Nazari’s Della tramutazione metallica, where the hopes of the alchemists are defined: “frenetiche pazzie, vane Chimere, sogni d’un ebbro, pensier falsi e triti, ladre invenzion … ” On 173–174, § “Delle varie maniere di trasformare il rame in argento,” he mentions Nazari’s verses featuring the famous five Fs: “apertamente ingannan chi gli crede. / E per l’affaticar che fan gli stolti, / fra tanti alcun non v’è che fe’ ritrovi, / perché promette nel principio i mari, / e monti far vedere poi si risolve / in nulla, e per ristor di lor mercede / ritrovan sempre di lor opra al fine / fame, freddo, fetor, fatica e fumo.” On 186, in the context of techniques used for whitening copper, he quotes other verses by Nazari: “Non vi beccate tutto il giorno i getti, / né vi formate in cor nuove Chimere, / o privi d’intelletto poveretti / alchimisti d’ingegno, e di sapere. / Fate pur buoni voi vostri concetti / di guadagnar, dovete pur vedere, / che la speranza vana che vi tiene / fa’ che perdere ’l tempo, e ’l proprio bene.”

134 Petrus Borellius, Bibliotheca Chimica, seu Catalogus librorum philosophicorum hermeticorum (mit einem Vorwort von Rudolf Schmitz) (Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag, 1969; reprint of Heidelberg: Samuel Broun, 1656), 157, providing some information on Nazari’s alchemical works.

135 Johann Friedrich Gmelin, Geschichte der Chimie seit dem Wiederaufleben der Wissenschaften bis an das Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. (Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag, 1965; reprint of Göttingen: J.G. Rosenbusch, 1797–1799), I, 299, § 4 “Zeitalter von Paracelsus“: “J. Bapt. Nazari, auch als Brescia, mehr als Sammler, als durch eigene bekannt, seine drei Träume und seine Concordanza dei filosofi welche gleichsam eine Fortsetzung der ersten ist.”

136 Hoefer, Histoire de la chimie, I, 131, § 23: “Alchimistes ambulantes.”

137 Herman Kopp, Die alchemie von letzten Viertel des 18. Jahrhunderts: die Alchemie in älterer und neuerer Zeit, 3 vols. (Hildesheim-New York: G. Olms Verlag, 1971; reprint of Heidelberg, 1886), II, 353.

138 John Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica. A Bibliography of Books on Alchemy, Chemistry and Pharmaceutics, 2 vols. (Glasgow: J. Macleose, 1906; reprinted in London: Derek Verschoyle Academic and Bibliographical Publications, 1964), II, 131–32. Ferguson reproaches Dufresnoy’s judgement on Nazari as simplistic and bibliographically inaccurate and lists works in which Nazari is mentioned.

139 Albert I. C. Caillet, Manuel bibliographique des sciences psychiques ou occultes, 3 vols. (Paris: Lucien Dorbon, 1912–1913, reprinted in Nieukoop: De Graaf Publishers, 1964), III, 168, § 7937.

140 Fritz Ferchl, Chemisch-Pharmazeutisches Bio-und Bibliographikon (Mittenwald: A. Nemayer, 1938), 379 (non vidi).

141 Bibliotheca Esoterica: catalogue annote et illustre de 6707 ouvrages anciens et modernes, qui traitent des sciences occultes … , comme aussi des societes secretes …  (Paris: Dorbon-Ainé, 1940; reprinted in Paris: C. Coulet & A. Faure, 1988), § 3232, where Nazari’s alchemical works are mentioned along with a few observations on the illustrations of the 1599 edition of Nazari’s Della tramutazione.

142 Dennis I. Duveen, Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica. An Annotated Catalogue of Printed Books on Alchemy, Chemistry and Cognate Subjects (Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1986; reprint of London: Weil, 1949 with a contribution by H. P. Kraus, “The Duveen Collection of Alchemy and Chemistry”), 426.

143 For a complete list of Nazari’s works, see Giovanni Battista Nazari, Della tramutazione metallica sogni tre (followed by the Canzone Alchemica by Rigino Danielli da Capodistria) (Milan: Arché, 1967; reprint of the 2nd ed., Brescia: Marchetti, 1599, with engravings), III–IV.

144 Nazari, Della tramutazione, 135–44. The same catalogue is reproduced in Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York-London: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958), V, 679–95.

145 See above, § 5.4.

146 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 123.

147 Nazari, Della tramutazione, 140.

148 Ferguson, Bibliotheca, I, 1–2; the work was titled Epistolae duae scrutatoribus artis chymicae mandatae and was published both in Latin and in German translations at least four times between 1670 and 1759. The Latin and German text of the Epistolae is printed in Friedrich Roth-Scholtz, Deutsches Theatrum Chemicum, 3 vols. (Hildesheim-New York: G. Olms Verlag, 1976; reprint of 1732 ed.), III, 651. The identification of the author is difficult. Ferguson proposes to identify him with a monk from Padua, who lived around 1350 and practiced alchemy with some good results; he notes, however, that this identification is incompatible with the presence in Antonius’s Epistolae of characters who lived in the sixteenth century. Gmelin, Geschichte, II, 21, § 1 “Zeitalter der neueren Geschichte, oder Boyle’s Zeitalter,” suggests that Antonius should be identified with an Italian alchemist contemporary with Robert Boyle (d. 1691).

149 Borelius, Bibliotheca Chimica, 24: “Antonii de Abbacia Epistolae duae de lapide philosophico, a Nazari memoratae.”

150 Borelius, Bibliotheca Chimica, 24: “Antonius de Florentia, Chimicus est, ex Combachio.”

151 Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 123.

152 The Arabic OAS does not preserve the theoretical passages on vitriol that are found in the Latin tradition. Instead, it opens abruptly with the recipe given here.

153 Muṣawwaf (“woolly”) refers to a particular feature of Yemenite alum. Steele’s Latin edition (p. 15, § 4) may preserve a more complete reading: “de alumine Jameni albo lanoso puro,” while Ruska does not include a corresponding Latin adjective in his edition. The Hebrew version here uses an Italian word in transliteration: luminoso (“shiny”). The proximity of the Latin/Italian terms luminoso/laminoso/lanoso should also be taken in consideration.

154 Andara can be identified with a town located in the Kerman province in modern day Iran.

155 The copyist inserted a ثم here, which I consider a copying error and avoid in translation.

156 For geographical names in the Arabic OAS, see Introduction, 4.3.

157 Ruska, Das Buch, 122, proposes to emend الغمامة to the more common العامة and translates this phrase as silver of the people (“Silber der Menge”). In his edition he seems to overlook the presence of the adjective البيضاء in the manuscript. In my edition and translation, I chose to follow the reading of the manuscript.

158 This expression appears to echo the wording of medieval Islamic philosophical debates on the different kinds of existence that define God as the only “existent by itself” and everything else as “existing by other than itself.” However, its usage in the above passage suggests a more trivial understanding: alkali salt can be found in nature, but can also be produced artificially.

159 The “white river stone” possibly indicates flint, a stone used in glassmaking. Flint combined with alkali salt turns into a white-coloured glass when heated.

160 The Arabic text appears problematic in this passage, possibly due to errors in the copy. My translation is, therefore, tentative and provisional here.

161 Literally, of “its salt.” This passage underlines the peculiar behaviour of alkali salt exposed to fire: its quickness in melting is caused by the greasiness that is contained in it. According to the OAS, this quality makes it more suitable to be employed in alchemical operations, since it can be melted rather than dissolved in another substance.

162 The passage between asterisks appears as a marginal note. A graphic pointer in the text shows the exact position where the copyist intended this note to be positioned.

163 The upper margin of the page preserves an extensive note that is difficult to read, written perpendicularly to the main text and penned by a fairly hasty and less accurate hand than that of the copyist.

164 “Servant” is a common Deckname for mercury, which is also commonly called “the fleeing servant” in virtue of mercury’s volatility, which causes it to flee the fire.

165 “Scorpion” is a common Deckname for sulphur.

166 “Sign” or “Mark” is a common Deckname for arsenic.

167 The Arabic expression literally translates as “alum of safflower,” possibly a reference to the colour of the alum.

168 Mars is a common Deckname for iron.

169 This passage is problematic, since it implies that one should dissolve in water something that has already been dissolved in water. Ruska, Das Buch, 53 proposes to emend the second عذب ماء (“fresh water”) in the sentence as عسل “honey” on the basis of the Latin versions. The passage should therefore read: “dissolve it in two parts of fresh water in which you have already dissolved honey.” This is a very good example of how change in the reading of a single word (or of even just few letters) determines a drastic alteration of the underlying chemistry.

170 Eagle is a common Deckname for sal ammoniac.

171 Probably a reference to bread salt (see § 2 “On salts”), although in this instance the Arabic text does specify dough rather than bread. I have maintained the distinction between “bread salt” and “salt of dough” in my translation despite the two phrases appearing to refer to the same kind of salt.

172 I propose this translation on the basis of the meaning of the verb ازق and the context, although this would represent a very rare occurrence. Possible alternative translations are “bottle-necks” and “bellows” (as plural of زق ).

173 The meaning of this expression is ambiguous: the “third transmutation” appears to be highly regarded in the text and could be interpreted as denoting metallic transmutation. Nowhere in the text is any mention made of a progression of transmutations.

174 The “two leads” probably indicate lead and tin.

175 The double couples of metals mentioned here could allude to different qualities of the same metal, as in the case of “the two coppers” or different, but similar, metals, like copper and brass or bronze, similarly to the phrase “the two leads” meaning tin and lead.

176 The name of the final product of this operation is spelled in Syriac letters in the manuscript in a very unclear script: a tentative transcription would be too risky. The context of the passage makes “the Moon,” a Deckname for silver, the most plausible translation.

177 I.e. sal ammoniac (see above).

178 The inferior disk of the head of the distilling apparatus where the sublimed substance would deposit is indicated by the word ترس , literally “lip.” See Sébastien Moureau and Nicolas Thomas, “L’aludel: savoir et savoir-faire transmis du monde arabe à l’Occident médiéval?” in Héritages arabo-islamiques dans l’Europe méditerranéenne, ed. Catherine Richarté, Roland-Pierre Gayraud and Jean-Michel Poisson (Paris: La Découverte, 2015): 239–52.

179 The text here describes the two ores of arsenic : realgar, a red ore, and orpiment, a yellow one.

180 The Arabic text has a lacuna here. Ruska, Das Buch, 39, suggests supplying the missing text on the basis of the Latin versions, that reads “cum in utrisque non sit fortius eo”; in Arabic, فيهن اغز, “the stronger among them.”

181 I.e. sulphur (see above).

182 Venus is a common Deckname for copper.

183 A long marginal note, written in a different hand to that of the main text, is found on the right margin of this page. It is devoted to the description of the “fat of the scorpion,” a kind of greasy and sulphureous substance.

184 Superscript in the manuscript.

185 Superscript in the manuscript.

186 Ruska, Das Buch, 31, maintains that the content of the quotation is actually derived from the Liber Secretum Secretorum of al-Rāzī, more correctly titled in Arabic Kitāb al-Asrār (“The Book of the Secrets”). In the extant Latin versions the book’s title is given as Liber de spoliationibus (Steele’s edition) and Liber denudatorum (Ruska’s edition). On the alchemical books and authorities mentioned in the Arabic OAS, see Introduction, § 4.3.

187 It is not clear what the expression “principle of lime” is intended to denote here. The Latin versions have radix calcis (Ruska ed. § 1) that corresponds to the Arabic reading, and radix noce (Steele ed. § 11). In the Hebrew translation we find the expression “root of lime.” The idea that the prime matter of the stone is commonly despised and deprecated by ignorant people who do not recognize its value is a common trope in alchemical literature.

188 The idea that mercury does not die unless “with its brother” is a common trope in Latin medieval alchemy.

189 This quotation, that a reader might attribute to Ǧābir as in the previous section, is actually from Ḫālid ibn Yazīd, who is praised as truthful at the end of the passage, and belongs to line six of poem 91, according to the classification proposed by Marion Dapsens, “The Alchemical Works of Khālid,” 368. I am very grateful to Marion Dapsens for identifying this quotation. On the alchemical books and authorities mentioned in the Arabic OAS, see Introduction, § 4.3.

190 This insulating material composed mainly of fermented clay and hair is commonly known as “the clay of wisdom” (lutum sapientiae in Latin). On the composition of the lutum sapientiae, see Nicolas Thomas, “De la recette à la pratique, l’exemple du lutum sapientiae des alchimistes,” in Craft Treatises and Handbooks: The Dissemination of Technical Knowledge in the Middle Ages, ed. Ricardo Cordoba de la Llave (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 249–70.

191 The sentence does not appear to describe a possible behaviour of arsenic. In the translation, I assume that a conjunction ف between the two phrases may have been lost in the transmission of the text. A literal reading of the passage as it stands would be “replacing the salt each time it comes out like camphor.”

192 The manuscript here uses the symbol of a crescent to indicate the Moon, i.e. silver.

193 The Arabic text here prescribes the use of ṣafā’iḥ of arsenic, that can be translated also as “sheets,” “plates,” or “leaves.” I have translated it as “flakes” to reflect the physical appearance of mineral orpiment.

194 This expression recurs several times in the text: the Latin versions have “cum contritione et exsiccatione” (Steele ed. § 14) and “cum molitione et siccatione” (Ruska ed. § 4); the Hebrew version reads “by crushing and drying” (§ 15).

195 A long marginal note, written in a different hand from that of the main text, appears on the right margin of this page. It describes the preparation of a sharp water used for breaking iron.

196 The Moon is a common Deckname for silver.

197 People of the work, Ahl al-ṣinā‘a, refers to the alchemists.

198 Rāsḫat designates burnt copper, the Latin aes ustum.

199 The Book of the Flower Beds (Kitāb al-Riyāḍ) is the genuine title of a Ǧabirian work. On the books and authorities mentioned in the Arabic OAS, see Introduction, 4.3.

200 Alum from Yemen, white and flaky, was praised for its purity and is a very common ingredient in alchemical as well as medical recipes in the medieval Arabo-Islamic world: see Moureau, De Anima, 252–3. Frequent mentions of Yemenite alum are found, for instance, among the medical fragments from the Cairo Genizah, where alum features in lists of goods imported from Yemen.

201 An oblong symbol (which only slightly resembles the font I have employed above) is here used to indicate gold.

202 The same symbol is here employed to represent the result of this operation.

203 The preposition and the first element of the article that should be attached to this noun are detached from it and conclude the previous line of text.

204 The same symbol employed above is repeated here to represent the product of this operation. 

205 Dragon’s blood is the product of the dragon’s blood tree. See Max Meyerhof, Sharḥ asmā’ al-‘uqqār. L’explication des noms de drogues (Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d'archéologie orientale, 1940), n° 96.

206 The Arabic text here employs the word baṭṭāl (“idle,” “inactive,” “unemployed”), which is not found elsewhere in the text.

207 The symbol of the crescent, which is often found in the manuscript of the OAS generally represents silver and it is interpreted as such in my translation.

208 Bismār in the manuscript, a colloquial form for mismār (“nail”). The context would indicate that, rather than a nail, a vessel or pot of some kind should be employed here.

209 The figure in the manuscript can be read as the Eastern form of the Arabic numeral 5. On the different forms of Arabic numerals, see Rida A. K. Irani, “Arabic Numeral Forms,” Centaurus 4 (1955): 1–12; Charles Burnett, “Indian Numerals in the Mediterranean Basin in the Twelfth Century, with Special Reference to the ‘Eastern Forms,’” in From China to Paris: 2000 Years’ Transmission of Mathematical Ideas, ed. Yvonne Dold-Samplonius, Joseph W. Dauben, Menso Folkerts and Benno Van Dalen (Stuttgart: Steiner 2002), 237–88; reprinted in Charles Burnett, Numerals and Arithmetic in the Middle Ages (London-New York: Routledge, 2010) and Richard Lemay, “Arabic Numerals,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph Strayer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982), 382–98.

210 The text here is problematic and my translation, therefore, provisional. The passage appears to describe the process of smearing and pressing fat onto the cloth containing the mixture of silver filings, mercury, and arsenic in order to prevent the volatile component (the mercury, or “servant”) from escaping. The word zayyuġ could be translated as “deviations,” which does not seem to be fitting in the context, or as a rather unusual plural of zāġ (“crow”) and therefore as a Deckname.

211 The copyist here appears to be confused about the title and topic of this section: he first wrote زاج (vitriol), but later corrected it to زجاج (glass) and repeated this word in separated Arabic letters on the upper margin. This section is absent from the Hebrew version of the OAS.

212 The last two letters of the word نشادر are not present in the manuscript.

213 The symbol of a crescent here represents the final product of the previous procedure, namely silver.

214 I here translate the verb حل , which I normally render as “to dissolve,” with the verb “to melt,” to reflect the kind of operation described and the behaviour of glass.

215 In Arabic alchemical, medical, and mineralogical literature, the word qala‘ī is used to define different kinds of tin and lead. Its meaning is not always consistent as it can describe pure tin, pure lead, black tin, and black lead, but also white tin and white lead. Given this ambiguity, I have preferred to leave the term untranslated. See Reinhart P. A. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden – Paris: Brill – Maisonneuve 1927), vol. II, 397, where the word is etymologically connected to the name of an Indian city, Qala‘a or Kala, where tin was mined. See also Fabian Käs, Die Mineralien in der arabischen Pharmakognosie. Eine Konkordanz zu mineralischen Materia medica der klassischen arabischen Heilmittelkunde nebst überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Studien (Wiesbaden: Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur, 2010), on 201–4, 223–26, 293–96, 582–86, 901–3. For a discussion and a tentative assessment, see Moureau, De Anima, I, 273.

216 The procedure described in this passage is not very clear: the sequence of substances could function as a superficial mordant or polish for tin.

217 قطران , generally translated as “tar,” can also designate the sap of the juniper trees that was cooked and used to smear the mantle of camels; other possible meanings are “melted brass” and “any melted substance.”

218 This kind of water only appears in this passage of the OAS and is not a common ingredient in Arabic alchemical treatises. It is not clear whether this water is obtained by infusion or by distillation or if the whole should be interpreted as a Deckname.

219 Kohl (كحل ) is a preparation of pulverised stibnite (antimony) used as a cosmetic and medicine for the eyes since ancient Egyptian times. Its use is recorded all over the Near East, the Mediterranean basin, and parts of Africa.

220 Adawiyya in the text, lit. “remedies,” “medicines.”

221 The character in the manuscript can be read as the Eastern form of the Arabic numeral 5. See n. 212, above.

222 I translate رصاص as “lead” throughout the text. It should, however, be noted that this word is also often used for tin. See § 8 below, where “the two leads” are mentioned; these “two leads” possibly indicate both lead and tin.

223 I.e. silver.

224 The word دبس indicates a dense sugary paste, like syrup, treacle, or molasses.

225 The number seven is given both in letters and as a numeral.

226 In the manuscript, a separate letter ح followed by a ا is found here; this feature makes it difficult to decipher this passage.

227 The manuscript here has an oblong shape that should stand for the name of the product of the operation previously described.

228 This reading is conjectural and based on the context. The Arabic text preserves Syriac letters, a heh, an aleph, and possibly a final heh or semkhat.

229 The name of this ingredient is spelled in Syriac letters in the manuscript. It could be read as usrub (“lead”).

230 The text of this recipe does not represent the conclusion of the chapter on the musk, but is actually the end of the closing recipe of the section on gold that is not preserved in the Arabic manuscript, but is available in the Latin and Hebrew translations of the OAS.

231 The number seven is given both in letters and as a numeral in the manuscript.

232 The reading of this passage is complicated by the presence in the manuscript of symbols and abbreviations that prevent the understanding of the ingredients and products of this procedure.

233 The passage plays with the real and metaphorical meaning of Sun and Moon, here standing for the metals gold and silver in the first occurrence, and for the actual planets in the second.

234 In the discussion of the internal and external natures of gold and silver, the author attributes a masculine nature to the sun, which is grammatically feminine in the Arabic language, and a feminine nature to the Moon, which is masculine. A further element of shift in genders is the attribution adjectives of feminine form to the masculine word ṭab‘.

235 A word in Syriac letters is found here in the manuscript. It appears that it could be read as a transliteration from the Arabic اسرب , meaning “lead,” but lead is mentioned in this same sequence, suggesting another interpretation.

236 The letter ض in this word is here replaced with a Syriac letter teth.

237 The final ن in this word is stretched and its trait reaches to the following four words.

238 The letter ض in this word is here replaced with a Syriac letter teth.

239 Saturn is a common Deckname for lead.

240 The word for salt appears written in Syriac letters in the manuscript, preceded by the numerals 1 and 30. The two figures can be decoded, according to the system of correspondences of numbers and Arabic letters, as the article al. On the left margin of the page, a note in separate letters appears to erroneously interpret the Syriac letters for “salt” as the word as qalaʿī.

241 The word for Moon is written in Syriac letters in the text, preceded by the numerals 1 and 30. As in the previous line, these two figures can be decoded as the article al. On the left margin of the page, a note in separate letters appears to correctly decode the Syriac word as قمر , “the Moon,” i.e. silver.

242 The text here preserves an oblong symbol representing the product of the previous operation.

243 This passage possibly refers to the shape the ingredients previously inserted in the eggshell will assume after prolonged cooking: they will congeal on the interior walls of the eggshell leaving an empty space in the middle.

244 The crescent represents the Moon and, therefore, silver as the product of this operation.

245 This term is often translated as tin, but in this text it can indicate different metals.

246 Tin’s nature is here explained with reference to the mercury-sulphur theory: during the formation of tin’s mineral below the ground, the overabundance of sulphur, which is naturally hot and dry, reduces the proportion of tin’s moist component. On the mercury-sulphur theory, see above § 3.2.

247 The Arabic text is ambiguous, since the expression could also be rendered as “it is unparalleled with it.” The Hebrew version (§ 55) has “because it is similar to it.” The Latin translations render this passage as: “quia est singulari ei” (Ruska ed. § 55) and “quoniam est cum [sic] singulare cum eo” (Steele ed. § 65).

248 The text here preserves an oblong symbol representing the product of the previous operation.

249 Two lines of marginalia are found on the right margin of the manuscript, corresponding to lines 6–8: this note lists ingredients (Mars, scorpion, eagle) and says that they enter into a better preparation, probably in comparison with the one in the main text.

250 In Syriac letters in the manuscript. The corresponding Arabic word قمر (Moon) is spelled out in separate letters in the right margin of the manuscript.

251 In Syriac letters in the manuscript. The word قمر (“Moon”) is spelled out in separate letters in the right margin of the manuscript. It appears to be an incorrect reading of the Syriac letters in the text.

252 The text prescribes shaping a layer of clay around the head of the vessel. The adjective describing the kind of clay to be employed (muḥkam, “solid,” “firm,” “strengthened”) shares the same root with the noun ḥikma (“wisdom”). A reference echoing the famous clay of the sages, known in the Latin world as lutum sapientiae or argilla philosophorum may underlie this passage.

253 The figure in the manuscript can be read as the Eastern form of the Arabic numeral 5. See n. 209, above.

254 A note on the left margin of the manuscript repeats the title of this section, probably with the aim of clarifying the text that is here crammed and unclear.

255 For the meaning of “tar” in this context, see n. 217, above.

256 The word الكيمياء does not always refer to the discipline of alchemy, but has the more general meaning of “a mean to reach an end” (in this case, the elixir). See, for instance the work of the philosopher al-Ġazālī (d. 1111) called Kīmiyā’ al-Sa‘āda (“The alchemy of happiness”) where kīmiyā’ describes a methodology for happiness. In the alchemical context, al-kīmiyā’ can refer to the philosophers’ stone itself, or to its prime matter. Therefore, this passage appears to identify lead as the prime matter required in order to transmute metals into gold. In the Latin tradition, the identification of the prime matter with lead is commonly attributed to al-Rāzī; see, for instance, Rampling, Experimental Fire, 116 n.43. This very text could be responsible for such an attribution.

257 This passage makes reference to the alchemical theory of the hidden qualities of metals. In this case, gold and silver are present in lead in potentia, but they are not apparent to the senses. The alchemist’s job is to draw out these inner qualities and elicit the transmutation.

258 The oblong symbol in the text is interpreted by a superscript note that clarifies it: it should be understood as the Sun and, therefore, as gold.

259 This verb written below the line and its positioning in the text is indicated by a pointer.

260 According to their qualitative nature, lead and gold are the mirror images of one another, and, therefore, they would not naturally mix together. It is also true that lead and gold do not form alloys together.

261 This passage provides another clear example of the theory of the hidden qualities, establishing a very close relationship between two metals in which hidden and apparent qualities are the exact opposite.

262 While the Arabic text does not provide an explicit attribution for the following passage, both the Latin editions (Ruska ed. § 58; Steele ed. § 68) and the Hebrew translation (§ 58) attribute this saying to Pythagoras. On Pythagoras as alchemist in the Arabic tradition, see Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 152–3.

263 The Arabic text does not name the authority of this saying, while in the Latin edition by Ruska (§ 58a) the quotation is attributed to a certain Anfidrius, which is very likely to be the same authority that in the Hebrew translation of the OAS is rendered with a transliteration of the Latin (or rather Italian) name Isidoro.‏

264 The passage is clearly referring to the properties of gold, i.e. its incorruptibility, its stability and the fact that it does not produce sound when struck.

265 The word اهل is duplicated in the manuscript.

266 The final ت of this verb is superscripted to the line of text.

267 The verb is superscripted to the line of the text.

268 The phrase “people of the seal” may point to artisanal practices of melting lead to produce seals for scribes and official correspondence.

269 Although the text specifies four things, five are actually listed.

270 The phrase between brackets is added to the lower margin of the manuscript probably with the function of catchword, and is also repeated at the beginning of the next folio, where is it seems to find its correct positioning.

271 The descensory is a particular kind of composite crucible which was known in the Latin world as the botus barbatus or descensorium. On distillation per descensum and its apparatus, see Thomas and Claude, “Vases à fond percé.”

272 The previous two words are written in Syriac letters in the manuscript. A note on the left margin of the manuscript provides a transcription in Arabic letters: من ماء .

273 The reading of the manuscript is problematic in this passage; my proposed translation is based on the other versions of the OAS and the context, and should be considered provisional.

274 The symbol of a crescent here stands for the product of this operation, which is silver.

275 This verb is superscripted to the line of text.

276 An Arabic numeral (400) is here followed by the preposition من in Syriac letters. A marginal note repeats the same preposition in Arabic script.

277 The Arabic letter nūn is superscripted to the line of text, possibly indicating the dualization of this noun.

278 An Arabic numeral (400) and two Syriac letters are combined to indicate the product of this operation. 400 corresponds to the Arabic letter ش and the two Syriac letters correspond to م and س , thus the encoded word can be decoded as “The Sun” (شمس ) and hence as gold.

279 Urine is a very common organic ingredient in alchemical recipes that often specify which kind of urine should be employed; recipes prescribe the use of boys’ urine, young girls’ urine, and aged or matured urine. This recipe possibly requires the use of a mixture of female and male gazelles’ urine. The name “gazelle” could also be a rare Deckname standing for another substance.

280 This passage suggests that the author believes lead white could be produced starting from substances other than lead.

281 The symbol of a crescent here stands for the product of this operation, namely silver.

282 The Arabic numeral 400 is found in this position in the manuscript, followed by the Arabic preposition من in the Syriac alphabet. The role of these figures in this sentence remains obscure, since the quantity of yellow sulphur required in the recipes is expressed as “two parts” in what follows.

283 The word شمس (Sun) is spelled in the Syriac alphabet in the manuscript.

284 The text introduces here an oblong symbol representing the product of the previous operation.

285 A word in Syriac letters, probably indicating a kind of apparatus, is found here in the manuscript. I have not been able to decipher it because of the unclear script.

286 The word spelled here in Syriac letters can be read as the Arabic اخر (“another”).

287 The figure in the manuscript can be read as the Eastern form of the Arabic numeral 5. On the different forms of Arabic numerals, see above, note 209.

288 A word in Syriac letter, probably indicating a kind of apparatus, is found here in the manuscript. I have not been able to decipher it.

289 Over the symbol of the crescent a superscript note clarifies that it should be read as the Moon/silver.

290 A upside down heart shaped symbol represents here the product of the previous operation. A superscript note clarifies that it should be read as the Sun/gold.

291 A subscript ع is added to clarify the reading of this word, which is written in a rather crammed fashion in the manuscript.

292 The title of this section of the manuscript is spelled in Syriac letters in very unclear handwriting, and its reading would have been very difficult, were it not for a marginal note that clarifies, in detached Arabic letters, that the Syriac letters correspond to the word زجاج (“glass”).

293 The title of this section of the manuscript is spelled in Syriac letters and its reading is very uncertain. The second element can be read as “red” and the context and comparison with the Hebrew manuscript and the Latin editions suggest that the section deals with a red gem or, more generally, with a red precious stone.

294 The title of this section of the manuscript is spelled in Syriac letters in very unclear handwriting, and its reading would have been very difficult, were it not for a marginal note that clarifies, in detached Arabic letters, that the Syriac letters correspond to the word زجاج (“glass”).

295 The general reference to “they” as the authorities behind this opinion should be understood as a general mention of the alchemists or, more extensively, the philosophers.

296 The reading of the Syriac word in the title of this section is reconstructed on the basis of the general structure of the treatise and the content of the following passages. The Syriac text is difficult to decipher.

297 The word al-yāqūt (“ruby”) is hidden behind a series of Arabic numerals, a cipher that uses the correspondence between numbers and letters of the abjad system. A superscript note in separated Arabic letters clarifies the meaning of the phrase.

298 The title of this section is encoded with a mixture of Arabic numerals, Arabic letters, and Syriac letters. A superscript note provides its interpretation in separate Arabic letters: “description of the yellow gemstone.”

299 The word zumurrud (“emerald”) is hidden behind a cipher that relies on the correspondence between numbers and letters of the abjad system. A superscript note in Arabic clarifies the meaning of the phrase.

300 See the Criteria of Edition and Translation, p. 48, above.

301 These three terms are transliterated from Arabic in the text. Their identification is complicated by the rendition in the Hebrew alphabet.

302 This title does not correspond to any known work attributed to Ǧābir ibn Ḥayyān.

303 In transliteration from the Arabic عقاب . Eagle is a common Deckname for sal ammoniac.

304 On the language of the Vorlage of the Hebrew OAS, see Introduction and in particular § 5.6.

305 In transliteration from the Arabic زاج in the text.

306 The text uses the Italian word razione in transliteration, which is possibly employed for rendering the Latin ratio.

307 To be possibly identified with Ibn Ǧulǧul of Cordoba (d. 994); see Introduction, § 1.2 and § 4.3.

308 The meaning of this word and of the note itself remains obscure to me.

309 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ .

310 The introduction of a Biblical quotation in this passage is a very rare intervention of the Jewish translator/copyist, who customarily adds operative comments.

311 The whole phrase is in transliteration from Italian, but while its first part is easily deciphered as “per la sua” (“for its”), the second part remains obscure.

312 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

313 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

314 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

315 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all occurrences in this section.

316 The Hebrew text leaves here a blank space, possibly a lacuna due to the corruption of its Vorlage.

317 The Hebrew text leaves here a blank space, possibly a lacuna due to the corruption of its Vorlage.

318 The Hebrew text leaves here a blank space, possibly a lacuna due to the corruption of its Vorlage.

319 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي in all occurrences in this section.

320 The explanatory note here provides an alternative spelling for the transliteration of the Italian (or Latin) word masse, which is spelled as משי in the main text and as מסי in addition.

321 This word may be derived from the transliteration of the Arabic ğandal, meaning “flint” or “river stone.” The Latin versions have: lapis fluminis (Steele ed. § 7) and ginges (Ruska ed. § 78).

322 Transliteration from Italian litro, but here to be interpreted as libra, “pound.”

323 Transliteration from Arabic تنكار .

324 Transliteration from Arabic أوقية.

325 Transliteration from Arabic نشادر .

326 Moon is a common Deckname for silver.

327 In transliteration from the Arabic إكسير in all the occurrences in this section.

328 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all the occurrences in this section.

329 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي in the text in all the occurrences in this section.

330 In transliteration from the Arabic زاج in the text.

331 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all the occurrences in this section.

332 This information is duplicated, once in Hebrew and once in transliteration from the Italian “in fondo.”

333 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

334 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

335 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

336 The Italian word here transliterated can be read as “postremitate” or “posteritate” (Engl. “posterity”).

337 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in the text.

338 On the citations of Ǧābir and his works, see Introduction, § 4.3 and § 5.7.

339 The word here in transliteration is the Italian rendering of the Latin “scientia.”

340 The identification of this authority is problematic: the reading of this name as Lull (or rather Pseudo-Lull) appears too far-fetched to be proposed.

341 The identification of this alchemical authority is as puzzling to the contemporary reader as it was to the extensor of the Hebrew note, who proposes—if our reading is correct—the name of Bālīnūs, the Arabic name of Apollonius of Tyana to whom natural philosophical and alchemical writings were attributed.

342 The text of the manuscript presents extensive lacunae here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage, that make the reading of the passage very problematic.

343 The operation of filtration described here leads me to think that the verb “to ferment” here given in transliteration from the Italian “fermenta” is due to an error in the translation (or in its Vorlage).

344 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

345 The copyist repeats in superscript the letter ע that was unclear in his first realization in the text.

346 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

347 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

348 The interpretation of this marginal note, containing Hebrew numerals, eludes an easy interpretation.

349 The Italian word lamina in transliteration is repeated twice.

350 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

351 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي in the text.

352 The term שער meaning “gate” and here indicating a new “chapter” mirrors the Arabic usage of the term باب , literally “door.”

353 Here a combination of Arabic and Italian is employed, with “arsenic” in transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ and “clean” in transliteration from the Italian “pulito.”

354 The short note is limited to the substitution of the letter ש with the letter ס, but does not provide a real synonym nor an explanation.

355 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

356 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

357 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

358 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

359 The Italian words in transliteration here could be read as “e cemento” (“and cement”); this expression could possibly derive from the Latin e cemento, i.e. “silver from the cementation”, which is very pure silver.

360 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

361 In transliteration from Arabic آنك in the text.

362 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage

363 In transliteration from Arabic أوقية in the text.

364 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage

365 “The alchemists” or “the philosophers” is the subject of this sentence.

366 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

367 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

368 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

369 In transliteration from the Arabic إكسير in the text.

370 This phrase bears a striking similarity to a passage of the ritual of the consecration of wine and bread in Christian Catholic rite, thus corroborating the hypothesis of an Italian (or at least Catholic) environment for the production of the Hebrew translation of the OAS.

371 The marginal note here proposes a simple correction of spelling, from דמומת to דמות.

372 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

373 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

374 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

375 This passage lists some of the most common Decknamen for mercury. 

376 The brother and the sister in this passage can possibly be identified with gold and silver, whose quantity is believed to be increased when in combination with mercury.

377 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in the text.

378 Sun is a common Deckname for gold.

379 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in the text.

380 In transliteration from the Arabic زاج in all occurrences in this section.

381 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all occurrences in this section.

382 This expression is transliterated from the Italian “bene convoluto”; its meaning is not clear in this context.

383 In transliteration from Arabic أوقية in all occurrences in this section.

384 On the quotations of Ǧābir ibn Ḥayyān, see Introduction, § 4.3.

385 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all occurrences in this section.

386 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي in the text.

387 The Jabirian treatises referred to in this passage could be the Kitāb al-tadwīr (“The Book of the Construction of the Circle”), which is listed as the 36th of the One Hundred and Twelve Books, or the Kitāb al-Layla (“The Book of the Moon”), which is listed as the 36th of the Seventy Books. See Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, I, 25 and 53. In the list of Jabirian works in Kraus there is no trace of a Book on the Dissolution of the Five Spirits.

388 In transliteration from the Arabic أسرب in the text.

389 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

390 On the quotations of Ǧābir ibn Ḥayyān in the OAS, see Introduction, § 4.3.

391 The recipe prescribes the use of a moist reed, which probably means a green reed, not dried out yet.

392 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

393 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in the text.

394 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in the text.

395 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

396 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

397 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

398 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

399 The word has been corrected by the scribe, who deleted the ר of השמרים (“dross”) and replaced above the line with a כ for שמכים, a term whose sense eludes me in this context.

400 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

401 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

402 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

403 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

404 In transliteration from the Arabic إكسير in all occurrences in this passage.

405 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

406 This phrase combines a transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ (“arsenic”) and a transliteration from the Italian “condito” (“prepared”).

407 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in the text.

408 In transliteration from the Arabic درهم in the text.

409 In transliteration from Arabic أوقية in the text.

410 In transliteration from the Arabic مرتك in the text.

411 Blank space in the manuscript, possibly due to a corruption of the Vorlage.

412 This peculiar expression has no parallels in the treatise and may be the result of a corruption of the text that took place in the process of its transmission or translation.

413 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all the occurrences in this section.

414 In transliteration from the Arabic زاج in all the occurrences in this section.

415 In transliteration from the Arabic مرتك .

416 In transliteration from the Arabic إكسير .

417 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

418 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

419 In transliteration from the Arabic قلعي in all occurrences in this section.

420 In transliteration from the Arabic إكسير in all occurrences in this section.

421 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all occurrences in this section.

422 In transliteration from the Arabic بوط .

423 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all occurrences in this section.

424 In transliteration from the Arabic أوقية in all occurrences in this section.

425 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

426 Only the Hebrew text identifies these sages as Jews; all other versions present them as Indian sages.

427 In transliteration from Arabic نشادر .

428 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ .

429 In transliteration from Arabic إكسير .

430 In transliteration from Arabic القلي .

431 In transliteration from Arabic بوط .

432 In transliteration from Arabic نطروب .

433 In transliteration from Arabic تنكار in the text.

434 In transliteration from the Arabic قلعي in the text.

435 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

436 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي in the text.

437 In transliteration from the Arabic بوط in the text.

438 In transliteration from Italian in the text. The copyist provides a transliteration of difficult interpretation, probably caused by a problematic reading in the manuscript from which he was copying this section.

439 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر .

440 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي in the text.

441 The syntax of this passage appears corrupted.

442 On the interpretation of this word in transliteration, see Introduction, § 5.7.

443 The marginal note is concluded by an abbreviation that I am unable to solve.

444 The text of the Hebrew MS is interrupted abruptly at the end of folio 31v. The opening of the next folio, which is numbered progressively in Arabic numerals as 32, does not contain the continuation of the previous recipe but rather the end of one of the recipes devoted to the preparation of copper. In the Hebrew MS, the theoretical discourse on copper and its features and the first recipes devoted to this metal have not been preserved. It is very likely that this extensive lacuna corresponds to a folio of the manuscript that was lost before the trimming and the numbering of the pages in Arabic numerals.

445 In transliteration from Arabic بوط .

446 In transliteration from Italian in the text. The original word is difficult to reconstruct, but, given the context and the other versions, I believe a mortar is here intended. The word “antribulo“ could derive from the Italian verb “tribbiare/trebbiare” with the meaning of “grinding.”

447 In transliteration from Arabic نشادر .

448 In transliteration from the Arabic بوط .

449 In transliteration from the Arabic تنكار .

450 In transliteration from the Arabic نطروب .

451 See note 446, above.

452 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر .

453 In transliteration from the Arabic أصفر .

454 In transliteration from the Arabic زاج in the text.

455 On the identification of this character see Introduction, § 5.7.

456 The text of the manuscript presents a lacuna here, possibly caused by damage in its Vorlage.

457 In transliteration from the Arabic أوقي .

458 In transliteration from the Arabic قلعي .

459 I have not been able to identify the name of this iron vessel, which is here transliterated in Hebrew letters.

460 In transliteration from Arabic نشادر .

461 In transliteration from the Arabic أوقية .

462 In transliteration from Arabic بوط .

463 In transliteration from Arabic نشادر in the text.

464 “The milk of the virgin” is a common Deckname in alchemical literature, that can indicate ingredients that enter into an alchemical preparation, but also the final product or the elixir.

465 The manuscript has here two terms for lead: the Hebrew name of the metal עפרת is followed by the Arabic name أسرب in transliteration.

466 In transliteration from Arabic مرتك in the text.

467 In transliteration from Arabic إسفيداج in the text.

468 In transliteration from Arabic إكسير in all occurrences in this section.

469 In transliteration from Arabic أسرب in all occurrences in this section.

470 In transliteration from the Arabic قلعي in all occurrences in this section.

471 In transliteration from the Arabic أسرب in all occurrences in this section.

472 In transliteration from the Arabic قلعي in the text.

473 On the identification of this authority, see Introduction, § 5.7.

474 The adjective is here in the feminine form; this could be interpreted as a mistake of the translator/copyist or an intentional indication of the feminine nature of lead, which is mentioned in the following lines.

475 In transliteration from the Arabic أسرنج .

476 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر .

477 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ in all occurrences in this section.

478 In transliteration from the Arabic أسرب .

479 In transliteration from the Arabic آنك قلعي .

480 In transliteration from the Arabic أوقية in all occurrences in this section.

481 In transliteration from the Arabic آنك in the text.

482 The sock is probably a cloth envelope in which lead is wrapped and then suspended in the vase of vinegar, although the recipe does not mention it before this passage.

483 I have not been able to identify the kind of glassmaking apparatus employed here.

484 In transliteration from the Arabic بوط .

485 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي .

486 The title of this recipe does not match its content: while the recipe describes the preparation of an azure gem, the title promises a recipe for a red gem.

487 In transliteration from the Arabic لازورد .

488 In transliteration from the Arabic زنجار .

489 The substance here indicated with the progressive numeral “ninth” has been identified by Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 122–3 with talc. Patai maintains with some reason that the seven metals used by alchemists could be called by their progressive number from one to seven and, therefore, argues that the “ninth” should be identified with talc. Patai does not provide any supporting evidence to this claim. I have therefore preferred to keep the numeral in my translation.

490 The term שער meaning “gate” and here indicating a new “chapter” mirrors the Arabic usage of the term باب , literally “door.”

491 This portion of text is crossed out in the manuscript.

492 This portion of text is crossed out in the manuscript.

493 The copyist, having recognised that this section was a duplicate of the one in the previous folio, crossed it out in the manuscript.

494 I have not been able to identify this ingredient, whose name appears here in transliteration from an Italian word.

495 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر in all occurrences in this section.

496 In transliteration from the Arabic قلعي in all occurrences in this section.

497 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي .

498 In transliteration from the Arabic زرنيخ .

499 The very general title of this work prevents a clear identification of authorship and time of production.

500 In transliteration from the Arabic القلي .

501 I am proposing a very provisional translation of this abbreviation, which could be expanded as כליות ולב, meaning “kidneys and heart” and, therefore, “emotion and reason.” The phrase is Biblical (Jer. 11,20; Ps. 7,10) and it is also found in the Babylonian Talmud (Beraḥot 61).

502 In transliteration from the Arabic بورق .

503 In transliteration from the Arabic بوط .

504 In transliteration from the Arabic بر بوط . The double crucible (known in Latin with a rendition of the Arabic name as botum barbatum) is an apparatus used for separating dross from pure materials during fusion.

505 The transliteration of this Arabic word into Hebrew prevents its understanding.

506 In transliteration from the Arabic نشادر .

507 In transliteration from the Arabic زاج .

508 In transliteration from the Arabic إكسير .

509 I am here presenting an overview of the topics dealt with in the manuscript. Where rubricated headings appear in the manuscript, I simply provide a translation. Otherwise, I provide a brief summary of the content of the relevant manuscript section.

510 The same dialogue is also found in the Hebrew version of the OAS (fol. 25 verso), within a section of the work that has not been preserved in the Arabic manuscript.

511 I here present an overview of the topics dealt with in the manuscript by providing a translation of the headings in quadratic script, when available, or else a brief summary of the content of the relevant manuscript section.

512 The name is in transliteration from Italian and could be read as Bernardo.

513 The aforementioned mistake in the foliation in Arabic numerals intervenes at this point of the manuscript; the topics here listed for fol. 6 extend over two folios rather than one.

514 I have not been able to identify the word, probably a person’s name, concealed by this transliteration in Hebrew letters.

515 The identification of the authority mentioned here is made impossible by the transliteration of their name in Hebrew letters.

516 Arbuthnott, Pseudo-Razi. My notes on the Latin versions of the OAS are based on the material presented in Arbuthnott’s work and on exchanges on the topic with Professor Charles Burnett.

517 See Carini, Sulle scienze occulte, 5–8. A detailed description of the manuscript is in Unione Accademica Nazionale, Catalogo dei manoscritti filosofici delle biblioteche italiane, 11 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1993), VII, 97–105.

518 Carini, Sulle scienze occulte, 8. Carini does not provide enough evidence to consider his idea more than just an interesting opinion.

519 Carini, Sulle scienze occulte, XIV.

520 Berthelot, La Chimie, I, 317–19.

521 See Steele, “Practical Chemistry,” 10–11.

522 For the critical edition, French translation and a thorough analysis of the De Anima, see Sébastien Moureau, Le De Anima alchimique du pseudo-Avicenna, 2 vols. (Florence: Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2016).

523 See above, § 3.1.

524 Singer, Catalogue, 107–8.

525 The manuscript is available in digital version at the following address: https://collections.thulb.uni-jena.de/receive/HisBest_cbu_00015896 (accessed 14 October 2022). I am grateful to Sébastien Moureau who, having discovered this further version of the Latin OAS, shared its details with me while I was finalizing this section of the book.

526 Lodovico Frati, Indice dei codici latini conservati nella R. Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna (Florence: Successori Seeber, 1909; reprint of the article first published in Studi italiani di filologia classica 16 [1908]: 103–482), 1–171. For a presentation of the Caprara collection, see Didier Kahn, “Le fonds Caprara de manuscrits alchimique de la Bibliothèque universitaire de Bologne,” Scriptorium 48 (1994): 62–110.

527 Singer, Catalogue, 107–8.

528 For a detailed description of this manuscript, see William J. Wilson, “Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in the United States and Canada,” Osiris 6 (1939): 419–61.

529 The numbers below each Arabic and Hebrew term indicate the sections of my edition and translation of the Arabic and Hebrew OAS in which they are found.