Muslim Scholars

Widely translated into Latin during the 11th and 13th centuries, Jabir's work profoundly influenced Europen science. In them we can find remarkably sound views on method of chemical research. His Al Kimiya in particular reveals many fundamental techniques that led to the birth of modern chemistry and chemical enginerring.

The elemental system used in medieval alchemy was developed by Geber. His original system consisted of seven elements, which included the five classical elements found in the ancient Greek and Indian traditions (aether, air, earth, fire and water), in addition to two chemical elements representing the metals: sulphur, ‘the stone which burns’, which characterized the principle of combustibility, and mercury, which contained the idealized principle of
metallic properties. Shortly thereafter, this evolved into eight elements, with the Arabic concept of the three metallic principles: sulphur giving flammability or combustion, mercury giving volatility and stability, and salt giving solidity.

The seeds of the modern classification of elements into metals and non-metals could be seen in his chemical nomenclature. He proposed three categories:

* "Spirits" which vaporise on heating, like arsenic, camphor, mercury, sulfur, sal ammoniac, and ammonium chloride.
* "Metals", like gold, silver, lead, tin, copper, iron, and khar-sini;
* Non-malleable substances, that can be converted into powders, such as stones.

The origins of the idea of chemical equivalents can also be traced back to Jabir, who was the first to recognize that "a certain quantity of acid is necessary in order to neutralize a given amount of base."

He also gave the theory on the geologic formation of metals; the so-called sulphur, mercury theory of metals where the six metals differ essentially because of different proportions of sulphur and aresenic and antimony for their sulphides, According to Jabir, the metals differ because of "different proportions of sulfur and mercury in them."

Again the post is getting lengthier and we have not even started touching his inventions, hopefully will do that in our next post.