Fragments of Alchemy from a Cairene Synagogue: Context, Codicology, and Contents of the Alchemical Corpus of the Cairo Genizah

Abstract

This article presents the results of a survey and a first assessment of the corpus of alchemical manuscripts retrieved from the Cairo Genizah, a storage room mainly intended for sacred writings that is attached to the Ben Ezra synagogue of Old Cairo. The alchemical manuscripts are described in their codicological and palaeographic features; their content is analysed in the context of the medieval production of alchemical texts in the surrounding Islamic world. The alchemical corpus of the Genizah represents a unique and widely unstudied source for our understanding of the relationship between Jews and alchemy in the medieval Mediterranean World.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ben Outhwaite, Melonie Schmierer-Lee, and all my former colleagues at the Genizah Research Unit (Cambridge, UK) for their lasting assistance on everything Genizah related. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and corrections, that prevented many mistakes to enter this paper. Gideon Bohak, Charles Burnet and Bink Hallum were the first to talk to me about these fragments, and Prof. Bohak generously provided me with the first handlist of alchemical materials: I am truly thankful for their kindness and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On the figure of Mary, who was also called Profetissa and sometimes considered of Coptic origin, see Lucia Raggetti, “Maria the Alchemist and Her Famous Heated Bath in the Arabo-Islamic Tradition,” in Gendered Touch: Women, Men, and Knowledge-making in Early Modern Europe, ed. Francesca Antonelli, Antonella Romano and Paolo Savoia (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 21–39; on the appeal of this figure after the Middle Ages, see Matteo Martelli, “Maria’s Practica in Early Modern Alchemy,” in Antonelli, Romano and Savoia, Gendered Touch, 40–65; more on Mary in the Jewish context can be found in Raphael Patai, The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 60–80. On the relationship between Jews and alchemy, see Gabriele Ferrario, “The Jews and Alchemy: Notes for a Problematic Approach,” in Chymia. Science and Nature in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Miguel López Pérez, Didier Kahn and Mar Rey Bueno (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 19–30.

2 See for instance the reference to Adam among alchemists in Ben Jonson’s drama The Alchemist, act 2, scene 2, line1.

3 Moritz Steinschneider, “Typen,” Jeshurun. Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums 9 (1873): 84: “Wir haben hier Nichts aus ältern hebräischen Quellen zu berichten, obwohl die Alchimisten ihre pseudoepigraphischen Schriften auf Mose und seine Schwester, welche als Maria die Koptin erscheint u.s.w. zurückdatieren. Die Juden verstanden sich auf die reelle Goldenwaage zu gut, um sich vom ‘Stein der Weisen’ zu Narren machen zu lassen.”

4 The most important Hebrew alchemical manuscripts preserved in European libraries are Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS Orient. Oct. 514; Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS Orient. QU 543; London, British Library, MS OR 10289 (the so-called Gaster manuscript); Budapest, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, MS Kaufmann 454; Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS 1435. Other alchemical manuscripts preserve texts in Judaeo-Arabic and still await to be properly researched; for instance, the manuscript titled “Tadbīr” in London, British Library MS Or. 64, and a collection of alchemical materials that appears to be preserved only in a microfilm derived from photocopies in Jerusalem, National Library of Israel, MS F 47434 (also known with the alternative collocation Margalit, Yisrael Bnei Brak, MS. 1). I am thankful to Benjamin Hallum, Arabic scientific manuscripts curator at the British Library, for providing me crucial information on these manuscripts, and for attempting to track down the latter item.

5 Joseph Shatzmiller, “Review of Patai, R. The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book,” American Scientist 83, no. 4 (1995): 387–88.

6 Gad Freudenthal, “Alchemy in Medieval Jewish Cultures: A Noted Absence,” in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 343–58. A recent assessment of alchemy in medieval Jewish culture is Gabriele Ferrario, “Alchemy in the Jewish Context,” in A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Middle Ages, ed. Charles Burnett and Sébastien Moureau (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 87–91.

7 Freudenthal, “Alchemy in Medieval Jewish Cultures,” 357–58.

8 I have presented some of the evidence regarding the supposed Jewish pre-eminent position as alchemists in Ferrario, “The Jews and Alchemy,” 19–21.

9 This principle is stated in Mishnah Shabbat 16:1.

10 The Times, 3 August 1897; see Melonie Schmierer-Lee, “3rd August: Schechter's Announcement in the Times,” Genizah Fragments Blog (3 August 2021): https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/genizah-fragments/posts/3rd-august-schechters-announcement-times (accessed 1 March 2024).

11 On the history of the discovery and retrieval of the Genizah manuscripts, see Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Genizah (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011); on the Lewis-Gibson sisters, see Janet Soskice, Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels (New York: Random House, 2010); a recent reassessment of the provenance of Genizah materials retrieved by Solomon Schechter and of their history before their arrival to Cambridge is in Rebecca J.W. Jefferson, “Deconstructing ‘the Cairo Genizah’: A Fresh Look at Genizah Manuscript Discoveries in Cairo before 1897,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 108, no. 4 (2018): 422–48. Genizah fragments are all digitised and may be viewed on the pages devoted to the Genizah in the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society website: https://fjms.genizah.org (accessed 27 February 2024). High quality images of a portion of the Genizah fragments preserved in the Cambridge Genizah Collections are found on the Cambridge University Digital Library together with descriptions of their material features and brief accounts of their contents: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/genizah/1 (accessed 25 February 2024). Readers can access the images of the fragments discussed in this article on either of the two websites.

12 On the dating of Genizah fragments, see Solomon D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 1, Economic Foundations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 19.

13 See, for instance, Sefan C. Reif, A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo: The History of Cambridge University’s Genizah Collection (London: Curzon Press, 2000).

14 On the languages historically used by Jewish communities, see Piero Capelli, “Giudeo-lingue e giudeo-scritture?,” in Contatti di lingue – Contatti di scritture. Multilinguismo e multigrafismo dal Vicino Oriente Antico alla Cina contemporanea, ed. Daniele Baglioni and Olga Tribulato (Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2015), 161–76. The Genizah preserves also very rare traces of Karmanli (Turkish in Greek script), and of a not-yet-identified language from the Indian subcontinent. See Julia G. Krivoruchko, “Karamanli – A New Language Variety in the Genizah: T-S AS 215.255,” Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month (July 2012): https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.62328 (accessed 10 January 2023), and Gideon Bohak, “T-S AS 159.248, T-S AS 159.247: An Unidentified Indian Language,” Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month (March 2008): https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.48229 (accessed 10 January 2023).

15 Some recent discoveries include a Judaeo-Arabic version of Thābit ibn Qurra On Talismans which is lost in its Arabic original, see Gideon Bohak and Charles Burnett, Thābit ibn Qurra On Talismans: Ps.-Ptolemy On Images 1–9 Together with the Liber Prestigiorum Thebidis of Abelard of Bath (Firenze: Sismel/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2021), and a very early Judaeo-Arabic version of a medical work of Qusṭā ibn Lūqā, see Gabriele Ferrario, “Graeco-Arabic Medicine in Jewish Attire: An Early Judaeo-Arabic version of Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s On Numbness from the Cairo Genizah,” Technai 13 (2022): 9–29.

16 This is, for instance, the case of magic, a discipline whose relevance and penetration in the daily life of medieval Cairene Jews has been revealed and thoroughly studied by Gideon Bohak and his students. For an overview of these materials, see Gideon Bohak, “Greek, Coptic and Jewish Magic in the Cairo Genizah,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 36, no. 1 (1999): 27–44.

17 Research on the documentary Genizah has reshaped the social and political history of the Mediterranean basin. See for instance the monumental work by Goitein, A Mediterranean Society. On the importance of Genizah documents for the reconstruction of the administrative practices of Egyptian caliphates, see Marina Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

18 The research project “Medicine in Medieval Cairo” (Wellcome Trust Research Resources Grant 105086/Z/14/Z) produced an online catalogue of all extant medical Genizah fragments in the Cambridge Collections and additional materials, including a preliminary bibliography on the medical fragments. A survey of the project and video materials can be viewed on the Genizah Unit’s website: https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/projects/medicine-medieval-egypt (accessed 17 January 2024).

19 The presence of alchemical materials in the Genizah is briefly discussed in Patai, Jewish Alchemists, 370–71 and in Norman Golb et al., “Legal Documents from the Cairo Genizah,” Jewish Social Studies 20, no. 1 (1958): 17–46. An assessment of alchemy in the genizot and a discussion of three alchemical fragments was presented by Tzvi Langermann at a conference held at Princeton University in 2017, and shared on digital academic platforms.

20 A bifolium refers to a single sheet of paper or parchment that has been folded in half to create two leaves or four pages.

21 While in 2007 I was a Yeats short-term fellow at the Warburg Institute in London in 2007, Prof. Bohak and Benjamin Hallum identified fragment T-S Ar.43.267 (discussed below) as a portion of a pseudo-Aristotelian lapidary. Thanks to Prof. Bohak’s kindness and hospitality, I was able to analyse in person some of the fragments he identified in Cambridge. Years later, as a researcher at the Genizah Research Unit, I managed to study the fragments more closely.

22 See n. 18 above. My colleagues at the Genizah Research Unit have also contributed to the corpus by notifying me of the alchemical fragments they encountered during their cataloguing activities.

23 The workshop “Exempla trahunt: Specimens of Alchemical and Scientific Manuscripts,” organised at the University of Bologna by Lucia Raggetti and Matteo Martelli in 2019 as part of the ERC project AlchemEast, first prodded me to think about the material features of these fragments, and to consider the typologies of alchemical manuscripts represented in the corpus.

24 A useful guide on these matters is Zina Cohen, Composition Analysis of Writing Materials in Cairo Genizah Documents (Leiden: Brill, 2022).

25 The Genizah is a unique source for documents on the trade with India. The study of these documents, inaugurated by Goitein, was then carried on by his students and their pupils. See Solomon D. Goiten and Mordechai A. Friedman, India Traders of the Middle Ages (‘India Book’) (Leiden: Brill, 2008); cloth as writing support is discussed on pp. 61 and 68. On the life and trades of a merchant and his entourage, see Solomon D. Goitein, Mordechai A. Friedman and Amir Ashur, Ḥalfon the Traveling Merchant Scholar (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2013).

26 Moses Maimonides himself devotes some considerations on the kind of writing support and inks that are more appropriate for copying sacred texts in Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, ed. Shabsai Frankel (Jerusalem: Hotzaat Shabsai Frankel, 2000), Hilkhot Tefillin, I.

27 On parchment and paper as writing supports in the Arabo-Islamic world, see Sara Fani, Prendi, aggiungi, mescola e scrivi. Ricettari arabi sulla preparazione di inchiostri (Milano: Editrice Bibliografica, 2023), 50–59.

28 All Genizah fragments mentioned in this article are preserved at Cambridge University Library. The letters T-S in the classmarks stand for the names of two of the main actors in the retrieval of the Genizah Collections, Charles Taylor and Solomon Schechter.

29 The fragment may have been produced in tenth century Iraq. Hebrew codicology and palaeography have still not perfected their tools to the level achieved, for instance, by their Greek or Latin counterparts. The matter is complicated by the willing or forced mobility of medieval Jewish scribes, who may preserve traits of their writing customs and styles and employ them in different geographical contexts. The main guides for a comparative approach to medieval Hebrew manuscripts are Colette Sirat, Du scribe au livre. Les manuscrits hébreux au Moyen Age (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1994), also available in English translation: Colette Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Nicholas De Lange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Codicology (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1981). A useful digital tool for approaching the dating of Hebrew manuscripts on palaeographic and codicological basis is SfarData, the codicological database of The Hebrew Palaeography Project of The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities: https://sfardata.nli.org.il (accessed 22 February 2024).

30 For a general discussion of the different kinds of vitriol in the Arabic tradition, see Fabian Käs, Die Mineralien in der arabischen Pharmakognosie: Eine Konkordanz zur mineralischen Materia medica der klassischen arabischen Heilmittelkunde nebst überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Studien, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), vol. 2, 604–23.

31 If we were to consider the occurrence of practical alchemical fragments on luxurious writing supports as more than just a fortuitous event, we could speculate on the value of practical recipes in the ranking of texts during the Middle Ages.

32 Determining the geographical origin of a manuscript on the basis of the place of production of its paper is risky, since paper was traded widely between Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, and, for instance, blank sheets of European paper arrived to Cairo and were there employed.

33 The use of Decknamen in the corpus is discussed below, “Contents” section.

34 The language used in this fragment is similar to the one of the Hebrew translation of the Book on Alums and Salts, where numerous Italian words in Hebrew alphabet are introduced; this translation was probably produced in seventeenth century Northern Italy. See Gabriele Ferrario, On Alums and Salts by Pseudo-Rāzī: The Arabic and Hebrew Traditions, Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry: Sir Robert Mond Studies in the History of Early Chemistry (Milton Park: Taylor & Francis, 2023).

35 The smallest fragments from the Genizah are the so-called minutes, hundreds of tiny pieces of paper and vellum that have been encapsulated in the final pages of the folders where larger genizah fragments are housed. An example of “minute” fragments can be seen at: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-TS-AS-00153-MINUTES/1 (accessed 13 September 2023).

36 I have discussed this fragment together with other alchemical materials produced by the same copyist in Gabriele Ferrario, “Alchemy in Medieval Egypt: The Nachlass of an Untidy Jewish Alchemist,” Asiatische Studien 75, no. 2 (2021): 513–44.

37 The Arabic edition of the section of the Fihrist on Jābir is in al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Gustav L. Flügel, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Vogel, 1871–1872), vol. 1, 354–58; English translation in Al-Nadīm, The Fihrist of Al-Nadīm. A Tenth Century Survey of Muslim Culture, ed. Bayard Dodge, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), vol. 2, 853–62; another English translation of the chapter on alchemy of the Fihrist is found in Johann W. Fück, “The Arabic Literature on Alchemy According to an-Nadim (A.D. 987),” Ambix 4, no. 3–4 (1951): 81–144. The fundamental studies on Jābir were published by Paul Kraus in the first half of the last century. See Paul Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān. Essay sur l’histoire des idées scientifique dans l’Islam: Textes Choises (Paris/Al-Qāhira: Maisonneuve/El-Khandgi, 1935); Paul Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam. vol. 2, Jābir et la science grecque (Al-Qāhira: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1942); Paul Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam. vol. 1, Le corpus des écrits jābiriens (Al-Qāhira: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1943).

38 In the Jābirian corpus it is clearly stated that knowledge is not presented in a linear fashion, but rather needs to be reconstructed by connecting teachings that are dispersed in different passages of different books. See, for instance, Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān. Essay sur l’histoire des idées, 442; Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire, vol. 1, xxvii, n. 1.

39 The most up-to-date portrait of medieval Jewish sciences and of the scientific exchanges among different communities is Gad Freudenthal, ed., Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); for a recent survey, see Gabriele Ferrario and Maud Kozodoy, “Sciences and Medicine,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 5, The Middle Ages, ed. Philip I. Lieberman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 825–63.

40 See the publications by Tonio Sebastian Richter, “What Kind of Alchemy is Attested by Tenth-Century Coptic Manuscripts?,” Ambix 56, no. 1 (2009): 23–35; Tonio Sebastian Richter, “The Master Spoke: ‘Take One of “the Sun” and One Unit of Almulgam’: Hitherto Unnoticed Coptic Papyrological Evidence for Early Arabic Alchemy,” in Documents and the History of the Early Islamic World, ed. Alexander T. Schubert and Petra M. Sijpesteijn (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Tonio Sebastian Richter, “P.Berlin P.8316 (= BKU I 21), ein koptisches Rezept zur Purpur-Imitation durch Krapp-Färbung auf gebeizter Wolle,” Journal of Coptic Studies 22 (2020): 151–86; Tonio Sebastian Richter, “Koptische Alchemisten und ihre Rezeptsammlungen,” in Wissenschaft und Wissenschaftler im Alten Ägypten, ed. Peter Dils, Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert, Ingelore Hafemann and Sebastian Richter, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde – Beihefte 9 (2021): 203–40; Tonio Sebastian Richter, “A 9th/10th-Century Coptic Archive of Medical and Alchemical Papyri, Supposedly from Nagʕ al-Mašāyḫ / Lepidotonpolis (Upper Egypt),” in Prescription to Prediction: The Ancient Sciences in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ida Christensen, Amber Jacob and Sofie Schiødt (forthcoming); Tonio Sebastian Richter, Writing and Practicing Alchemy in 8th to 10th-Century Egypt The Coptic Alchemical Texts Edited and Translated (forthcoming in the series of Ambix supplements “Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry: Sir Robert Mond Studies in the History of Early Chemistry”).

41 Confusion on the title of this alchemical work by al-Rāzī seems to have carried on from the Middle Ages to Modern times, as reflected by the title of the edition of this work in Julius Ruska, Al-Rāzī’s Buch Geheimnis der Gehemnisse mit Einleitung und Erläuterungen in deutscher Übersetzung (Berlin: Springer, 1937).

42 Only the liturgical text was recorded in Avihai Shivtiel and Friedrich Niessen, Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, New Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); the presence of Judaeo-Arabic material was noticed by Gideon Bohak and the team working on magical fragments, and is described on the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society Website: https://fjms.genizah.org (accessed 27 February 2024).

43 דהנג, line 2, from Persian دهنج , a gem resembling an emerald; see Francis J. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary, Including the Arabic Words and Phrases to be Met with in Persian Literature (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1892), 550.

44 On geomancy in the Genizah, see Blanca Villuendas Sabaté, La geomancia en los manuscritos judeo-árabes de la Gueniza de El Cairo (Córdoba: CNERU-CSIC/Universidad de Córdoba, 2015).

45 See n. 29 above.

46 T-S 20.85, T-S AS 182.2, T-S K14.15 appear to be datable to before the 11th century, while T-S Ar. 29.91, T-S Ar. 39.302, T-S Ar. 43.299, T-S Ar. 44.194, T-S K1.8, T-S K1.38, T-S K11.42, T-S K14.17, T-S K14.31, T-S Misc. 10.9, T-S Misc. 22.13 and T-S NS 90.64 show features that may point to a post-fourteenth century dating.

47 On the ninth century translation movement and its social, cultural and political causes, see Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbasid Society (London: Routledge, 1998); on the Arabic-Latin translation movement, see Charles Burnett, “The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in the Twelfth Century,” Science in Context 14 (2001): 249–88; more specifically on the translation of Arabic alchemical treatises into Latin, see Sébastien Moureau, “Min al-Kīmiyā’ ad Alchimiam. The Transmission of Alchemy from the Arab-Muslim World to the Latin West in the Middle Ages,” Micrologus 28 (2020): 87–141.

48 On the importance of Judaeo-Arabic as a language of transmission of Arabic scientific and philosophical works, see Moritz Steinschneider, “Schriften der Araber in hebraeischen Handschriften, ein Beitrag zur arabischen Bibliographie,” Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 47 (1893): 335–84; Moritz Steinschneider, “Introduction to the Arabic Literature of the Jews,” Jewish Quarterly Review 12 (1890): 499–501. A more recent re-assessment and re-listing is Tzvi Langermann, “Arabic Writings in Hebrew Manuscripts: A Preliminary Relisting,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 6 (1996): 137–60.

49 Paul Fenton, “Judaeo-Arabic Mystical Writings of the XIIIth-XIVth Centuries,” in Judaeo-Arabic Studies: Proceedings of the Founding Conference of the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, ed. Norman Golb (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), 88, n. 3. I discuss these two fragments in greater detail in a contribution to the proceedings of the “Power, Religion and Wisdom: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Al-Andalus and Beyond” conference of the ERC Project PhilAnd: https://sites.uclouvain.be/erc-philand/ (accessed 21 January 2023). My paper will appear as Gabriele Ferrario, “In a Hidden Place: Traces of Bāṭinism in the Fragments of the Cairo Genizah,” Micrologus (forthcoming 2025).

50 On the figure of Ibn Waḥshiyya and his works, see the overview in Jaakko Hämeen-Anttilam, “Ibn Waḥshiyya,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam: Three, ed. Kate Fleet et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2016), online edition: https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_32287 (accessed December 2023) and Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 209 and 440–43.

51 Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire, vol. 1, 17.

52 Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire, vol. 1, 30.

53 Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire, vol. 1, 37.

54 Kraus, Jābir ibn Ḥayyān, contribution à l’histoire, vol. 1, 45.

55 These fragments are Mosseri I.111, T-S 20.20, T-S 20.85, T-S 24.69, T-S Ar. 35.104, T-S Ar. 48.65, T-S Misc. 8.24, T-S Misc. 8.35, T-S Misc. 8.51. See Gabriele Ferrario, “Alchemy in Medieval Egypt,” where I describe the features of this group of manuscripts and present an edition and English translation of a selection of them.

56 The tradition of Arabic treatises attributed to Ostanes is a clear example of a heavily encrypted text. On the Arabic tradition of Pseudo-Democritus, Maria, and Ostanes, see Lucia Raggetti, Once Upon an Alchemical Time: The Arabic Tradition of Pseudo-Democritus, Maria, and Ostanes (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

57 See above, “Format” section.

58 Only the bifolium will be taken into consideration here, since the other two leaves contain unrelated materials. I have edited and translated a portion of this manuscript in Ferrario, “Alchemy in Medieval Egypt.”

59 The mixture should also include another ingredient which is unfortunately not preserved in the manuscript.

60 The recently concluded ERC Project AlchemEast has investigated alchemical texts and practices from ancient Babylonian times up to the assimilation of Greek alchemical knowledge in the Islamic world, see: www.alchemeast.eu (accessed 1 October 2023).

61 See Ferrario, On Alums and Salts.

62 I am here calling myths the vast alchemical production of alchemy that relates to its origins, the communication of secrets to adepts, the chains of transmissions, and the narrative materials that provide the frame for the development of alchemy in pre-modern alchemical traditions.

63 This fragment was firstly noticed by Gideon Bohak and identified by Benjamin Hallum. Benjamin Hallum also identified another fragment preserving a portion of the same text: T-S AS 160.251. On the Arabic Zosimos, see Benjamin Hallum, “Zosimus Arabus. The Reception of Zosimos of Panopolis in the Arabic/Islamic World” (PhD thesis, Warburg Institute, University of London, 2008).

64 The Arabic and Latin versions of this lapidary were studied by Julius Ruska, Das Steinbuch des Aritoteles: mit literargeschichtlichen Untersuchungen nach der arabischen Handschrift der Bibliothèque nationale (Heildelberg: C. Winter, 1912). The passage in the Genizah fragment corresponds to 185.6–13 in the edition.

65 See Sébastien Moureau, Le De anima alchimique du pseudo-Avicenne, 2 vols. (Firenze: Sismel/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2016).

66 A consistent correspondence between Decknamen and the substances or operations they stand for is often difficult to establish, and may vary with different authors and times. For a study on Arabic “cover names”, see Alfred Siggel, Decknamen in der arabischen alchemistischen Literatur (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1951) and Regula Forster, “Alchemy,” in Fleet et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam: Three: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.unibo.it/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_23831 (accessed 15 January 2024), referencing Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 268–70.

67 See above, “Format” and “Language” sections. The identity, dating and the very existence of the alchemist Jābir ibn Ḥayyān has been debated. Kraus maintains that “Jābir” 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 (“Book on Stones”) (New York: Springer 1994), 3–32, who maintains the existence of a single alchemist called Jābir, who flourished in the eighth century and composed all the books that bear his name – it 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, no. 1 (2017): 35–61 presents finds that further problematise the question of Jābir’s biography. The most recent and complete discussion of Jābir, his works, and the status of the Jābirian question is Regula Forster, “Jābir ibn Ḥayyān,” in Fleet et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam: Three, 91–97; online edition: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.unibo.it/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_32665 (accessed 20 December 2023).

68 See above, “Language” section.

69 The name of Cleopatra is linked to alchemical treatises in Byzantine alchemical manuscripts. Research on the alchemical works attributed to Cleopatra is being conducted by Vincenzo Carlotta. A portion of the alchemical dialogues of Cleopatra is published in Vincenzo Carlotta, “Anonymous: Dialogue of the Philosophers and Cleopatra (c. 600–700 CE),” in Women in the History of Science: A Sourcebook, ed. Hannah Wills et al. (London: UCL Press, 2023), 35–39.

70 On Ibn Umayl, see Muḥammad Turāb ʿAlī, Henry Stapleton and Muḥammad Hidāyat Ḥusayn, “Three Arabic Treatises on Alchemy by Muḥammad bin Umail,” Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 12, no. 1 (1933): 1–213; Alfred Siggel, Katalog der arabischen alchemistischen Handschriften Deutschlands. Handschriften der ehemals Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Gotha (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1950), 17–20, 39 et seq., 54–56; Julius Ruska, Turba Philosophorum. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Alchemie (Berlin: Springer, 1931), 310–18; Henry E. Stapleton, G. L. Lewis and Frank Sherwood Taylor, “The Sayings of Hermes Quoted in the Māʾ al-waraqī of Ibn Umail,” Ambix 3 (1949): 69–90; Gotthard Strohmaier, “Ibn Umayl,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam: Second Edition, ed. Peri Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2005): http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.unibo.it/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_3400 (accessed 18 January 2023).

71 On current research on Genizah evidence regarding trade with Yemen and India, see n. 25 above.

72 See Efraim Lev and Zohar Amar, Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean According to the Cairo Genizah (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), 14 and 68–70.

73 On inks and their ingredients in the medieval Islamic world, see Fani, Prendi, aggiungi, mescola e scrivi; Lucia Raggetti, Traces of Ink: Experiences of Philology and Replication (Leiden: Brill, 2021); Lucia Raggetti, “Inks as Instruments of Writing: Ibn al-Ǧazarī’s Book on the Art of Penmanship,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 10 (2019): 201–23; Lucia Raggetti, “Cum grano salis. Some Arabic Ink Recipes in Their Historical and Literary Context,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 7 (2016): 294–338.

74 The aforementioned study by Käs, Die Mineralien is the most useful tool for the appreciation of the medical use of minerals in the Islamic context.

75 Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 2, 726–41; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 99–100.

76 Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 2, 654–64, 745–49; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 104–06.

77 Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 1, 325–34; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 118–20.

78 On copper, see Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 2, 1073–81; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 61–63; on gold, see Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 1, 577–81; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 63, 68, 413 and 419.

79 Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 1, 219–22 and 395–400; vol. 2, 944–48; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 195–96.

80 Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 2, 692–97; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 61–62, 68–69 and 448–49.

81 Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 1, 254–55; vol. 2, 1034–36 and 1100–105; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 272–74.

82 Käs, Die Mineralien, vol. 2, 917–24; Lev and Amar, Practical Materia Medica, 68–69 and 297–98.

83 See Ferrario, “Alchemy in Medieval Egypt,” 5–7.

84 I intend to publish an edition and commented English translation of a selection of alchemical fragments from the Cairo Genizah.

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Gabriele Ferrario

Gabriele Ferrario is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Bologna. He works on the history of medieval sciences and on the transmission of scientific ideas across languages and cultures. He has held fellowships and post-docs at the Warburg Institute (London), the Chemical Heritage Foundation (now Science History Institute – Baltimore), the Genizah Research Unit (Cambridge, UK), Clare Hall College (Cambridge, UK), and in the ERC project AlchemEast in Bologna. He has been a visiting assistant professor in the History of Science Department of Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore). His first monograph The Book on Alums and Salts by Pseudo-Rāzī. The Arabic and Hebrew traditions (Milton Park: Taylor & Francis, 2023) recently appeared in the Sources of Alchemy and Chemistry: Sir Robert Mond Studies in the History of Early Chemistry series. Email: [email protected]