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Gold
has different meaning for different people. For a
prospector looking for the yellow metal, it is the dream
of a lifetime. To the rich woman, an ornament of gold is
a beautiful thing to be worn and displayed in front of
admiring friends. For the economists, gold is the basis
of stability in money and world trade, and is largely
responsible for the prosperity of nations of the world.
To the businessman, it is assurance for his success in
all his enterprises. Gold makes the greedy commit
violent crimes in the process of acquiring it. Its
possession makes people haughty, proud and dignified. It
has the power to dispel gloom and sadness. It processes
the ability to seduce the most powerful, beautiful and
influential people to its side. For some, gold ensures
domestic bliss and harmony in the house. However, it
cannot be useful in need except when it is spent.
Gold may not be the most
expensive among all the metals - uranium, platinum and
many jewels are worth more in the market place - but it
has been considered as the finest form of wealth, worth
acquiring since ancient times. It can easily be
converted to money in any part of the world and can also
be exchanged as payment for goods and services.
For the
scientist, gold is a noble metal, which is numbered 79
in the periodic table, with an atomic weight of 197.2
and a melting point of 1063 degrees Celsius. Its boiling
point is reached at 2600 degrees Celsius. It is a
durable metal that withstands corrosion. In its natural
state gold is fairly soft, ductile and easily malleable.
It can be hammered into very thin sheets, or drawn into
extremely thin wires. These properties in gold have made
it a useful metal to the jewelers, goldsmiths and the
metallurgists. However, gold is always brought into
practical use as an alloy, by mixing it in varying
percentages, usually with copper, as it is too soft to
be used in its original form.
Gold has always
held an important place in legend and history. Its
universal demand, acceptability and rarity made the
ancient people think of other means to acquire gold. It
is for this reason they thought of other ways and means
to acquire it - by turning other base metals into gold.
These people were called alchemists and their "science"
started early in the city of Alexandria, in Egypt during
the first century after Christ.
The alchemists,
who came after them, were influenced by the words of the
great Greek philosopher Aristotle in 400 CE who said
that all substances on earth were primarily made up of
four basic elements. They were water, fire, air, and
earth. According to his theory, all substances present
in the earth were different from one another only
because they had different proportions of these elements
in them. If this was so, reasoned the alchemists, one
substance can easily be turned into another by altering
its elemental make-up.
This feat turned
out to be anything but simple. But, hundreds of years
his thoughts persisted among sensible people who
believed in it. The science of alchemy was studied with
vigor, and its study became a mixture of practical
experiments using different substances combined with
some far-out mystical ideas. Some alchemists believed in
a substance called as the "Philosopher's Stone" that
could change any metal into gold. They searched
everywhere for it, but in vain. In order to keep their
findings and experiments a secret, the alchemists
developed a whole system of odd symbols and notations,
which only they could understand. After a while, the
symbols got so complicated that one alchemist could not
read another's manuscript.
From Egypt,
alchemy has spread into Europe and was studied in
different centers of world civilization. From the
Greek-speaking world, the study of alchemy was carried
into Syria and Persia. After the rise of Islam, the
learned men in the Arab world soon translated the Greek
texts and gave them to the Arabic speaking world. The
Arabs became enthusiastic alchemists. During the rule of
the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad, great works of
literature and science could hardly be translated
quickly enough to quench the thirst of learning that had
developed among the Arabs. After 900 CE, the Arab world
witnessed a great deal of activity in the development of
the science of alchemy, and in the process, developed a
respectable reputation for themselves as chemists among
the scholars of the Medieval Western world.
One of the first
Arabs to take an interest in alchemy was Khalid ibn
Yazid ibn Mu'awiya (635-704 CE) who had many
translations made of Greek alchemical writings. He is
also believed to be the author of several books on
alchemy, but none of them are extant. However, other
Arab alchemists quote his writings on this subject in
several books written on alchemy.
With the help of
the knowledge gained from the Greeks and the Egyptians
books on alchemy, the Arab alchemists soon started
carrying out original research and began to write books
of their own making several important contributions to
the science of alchemy that enabled others to establish
a smooth transition from alchemy to the science of
chemistry on the sure ground of a true scientific
method.
One of the
earliest descriptions of the work done by Arab
alchemists is found in "Kitab al-Fihrist," an
encyclopedia written by an Arab named Al-Nadim in 988
CE. In this encyclopedia, there is a section on alchemy,
which makes a mention on the origins of this science,
and lists the names of prominent Greek and alchemists of
the ancient times. Among the Arabs, we find the names of
Khalid ibn Yazid, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Dhu'n-Nun the
Egyptian, Ar-Razi and ibn Wahshiyya mentioned here.
Another important
source is the critical account of Arab alchemy given by
the great Arab historian - the author of "Muqaddimah" -
and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d: 1406 CE). In the
Prolegomena or "Foreword," he is severely critical of
the science of alchemy and doubts the integrity and the
intelligence of all those who pursued, practiced and
studied alchemy. Earlier to him, Ibn Sina had vehemently
opposed the study of alchemy. But, these criticisms only
spurred the Arab alchemists to greater efforts to do
experimental work and modify their theories on alchemy.
If the criticisms had been accepted, and the pursuit of
the transmutation of metals abandoned, it is possible
that the development of modern chemistry would have been
severely retarded.
The last
authority on the subject of alchemy and the Arab
alchemists is Haji Khalifa, a Turkish writer of the
seventeenth century. In his great work "Kashfu'l-Zunun,"
he gives a list of all the Arab, Persians and Turkish
alchemists and the books authored by them. In his book,
he honors the legacy of the early Arab alchemists, and
severely criticizes the works of some others. From this
account, one can gain a complete range of knowledge that
was known to the Arab alchemists until that time and
many of the books mentioned by him are still in
existence with the modern scholars studying but a few
among them.
The greatest
among the early Arab alchemists was Jabir ibn Hayyan who
lived in the eighth century CE. He is believed to be a
student of Khalid ibn Yazid. His fame was such that with
the passage of time, his books on alchemy - translated
into Latin - reached the Medieval European scholars, who
spelled his name as Geber. The European scholars
considered him as a scholar far ahead of his age in the
knowledge of chemical sciences - a fame that would last
until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Among the few
writings of Jabir that have been translated we find that
he was greatly influenced by the ideas of Aristotle and
agreed with him on his theory of four elements and the
unity of matter. This idea was, however, developed in
many different ways by Jabir and many additional
theories and hypotheses were suggested. According to
him, fire was hot and moist, and the earth is cold and
dry. These elements combine in rocks in various
proportions and produce metals of which the most perfect
state was represented by gold.
Jabir believed
that all metals belonged to one species. Other metals
failed to reach the perfect state of gold because of
certain 'accidental' qualities during their formation.
These imperfections could be removed by 'proper'
treatment. He believed that the imperfect metals were
similar to a man suffering from an 'illness,' like the
illness in a person is treated by administering an
appropriate drug, the sick man would soon regain his
normal state of health.
Explaining his
theory further, Jabir believed that all metals had
external and internal pair of qualities. Thus, we have
gold, which was hot and moist from outside, but cold and
dry from inside. Likewise, silver was cold and dry from
outside, but hot and moist from inside. In order to
bring about a transmutation from silver into gold, it
was necessary for an alchemist to alter the proportion
of heat, moisture, cold, and dryness present in a metal.
The baseness of a metal had to be altered by an
"elixir." Jabir greatly developed on this theory the
idea of a "supreme elixir," which would be the
'medicine' of metals and invented his 'method of
balance' (miz'an), which was a very systematic way of
tackling the problem of transmutation.
Some alchemists
believed that there was no single substance, which would
be enough to make one supreme elixir. For this reason,
they theorized the need for making two elixirs, a red
one to convert silver into gold, and a white one to
convert the remaining metals into silver. They believed
that only a minute portion of this elixir was enough to
convert an unlimited amount of imperfect metal into gold
by setting a never-ending, catalytic chain-reaction.
After Jabir, the
name of Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (864-923
CE) stands out as a hardheaded practical man of science.
He was the first person to compile an encyclopedia in
the Arab world, in every branch of science and
philosophy. His 'Book of Secrets' divides chemical
substances into well-marked classes: spirits, metallic
bodies, stones, vitriols, boraxes and salts. In his book
he describes the equipment needed to study alchemy,
including apparatus for distillations, sublimations and
furnaces. He discusses the chemical operations required
for the preparation of ammonia and strong acids. He
describes calcinations, dissolutions and combustions and
finally in obscure terms the process of making elixirs
for the conversion of lesser metals into gold.
Among the other
Arab alchemists of repute are the names of Abu'l Hasan
Ali al-Andalusi, the author of "Shudhur adh-Dhahab" (d:
1197), Abu'l Qasim Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Iraqi
(thirteenth century), Abdullah ibn Ali al-Kahshani
(thirteenth century) who wrote several alchemical
treatises including the book "Knowledge acquired
concerning the cultivation of Gold" on which Izz ad-Din
Aidmar ibn Ali al-Jidalki (d; 1360 CE), wrote a
commentary "Nihayat al-Talab" running into several
thousand pages.
The Arab
alchemists passed on to the Western world not only their
chemical knowledge of metallic compounds but also
practical experiments conducted in their efforts to
transmute base metals into gold. It is clear from the
few translations that have been done on the works of the
Arab alchemists that they knew about aqua regia and the
use of hydrostatic balance for weighing metals and also
the methods of determining their specific gravity. They
also passed to the Western world the Greek lore of four
elements, and other advances made by the Arab alchemists
in the study of alchemy. The Latin translation of their
works was a revelation to the Western world whose
pharmacy and metallurgy consisted only of the simplest
poundings, straining, boiling and melting.
The works of the
Arab alchemists did not enable other scientists to
convert base metals into gold, but the scientific
advances made by them in the study of alchemy set the
Western world firmly on the road of transition to the
study of modern chemistry. The real treasure that had
been discovered by the Arab alchemists was that they had
laid firmly the foundations to the science of modern
chemistry.
Nonetheless, the
changing of lead into gold remains what it was centuries
ago-an unrealized dream! |
