Jabir ibn Hayyan (721-815 A.D.)

Author: Adeel


We will start off with a brief introduction of arguably the most famous scholar Muslim World has ever produced Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan, renowned throughout Europe as the alchemist Geber was a prominent polymath: a chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, engineer, geologist, philosopher, physicist, and pharmacist and physician. But his most notable contributions were in the field of Chemistry and he is widely regarded as the Father of Chemistry. The son of an acclaimed pharmacist, he began his career as a physician in Haroon Rashid's court.

According to tradition, Abu Musa Jabir ibn Haiyan al-Azdl (al-Tusl, al-artusl, al-Harram, al-Sufi, also al-Kufi or al-Tartusi) was a Natural Philosopher who lived mostly in the 8th century, born in Tus, Khorasan, in Iran, then ruled by the Umayyad Caliphate. He was the son of Hayyan al-Azdi, a pharmacist of the Arabian Azd tribe who emigrated from Yemen to Kufa (in present-day Iraq) during the Umayyad Caliphate. Hayyan had supported the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyads, and was sent by them to the province of Khorasan to gather support for their cause. He was eventually caught by the Ummayads and executed. His family fled to Yemen, where Jabir ibn Hayyan grew up and studied the Quran, mathematics and other subjects under a scholar named Harbi al-Himyari. Jabir ibn Hayyan's father's profession may have contributed greatly to his interest in alchemy.

After the Abbasids took power, Jabir ibn Hayyan went back to Kufa. He began his career practicing medicine, under the patronage of a Wazir(from the Persian noble family Barmakids) of Caliph Haroon Rashid.

Jabir ibn Hayyan may have been a student of the celebrated Islamic teacher and sixth Imam Jafar al-Sadiq (R.A). His connections to the Barmakid cost him dearly in the end. When that family fell from grace in 803, Jabir ibn Hayyan was placed under house arrest in Kufa, where he remained until his death.

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