Jabir Ibn Hayyan

There is widespread dispute about his ethnicity as some sources report that he originally hailed from Khorasan and later on moved to Kufa while other accounts maintain that he was a Syrian who shifted to Persia. A few sources confirm that his father Hayyan-al-Azadi, belonging to the al-Azdi tribe, was a pharmacist.

Hayyan-al-Azadi migrated from Yemen to Kufa (which is now in Iraq) then administered by the Umayyad Caliphs and unwittingly got involved in the political machinations. He staunchly backed the Abbasids opposing the rule of the Caliphates and was dispatched to Khorasan as an emissary to garner support for the mutiny.

The Umayyad Caliph got al-Azadi arrested and he was ultimately executed for plotting against his government. Al-Azadi’s family escaped to Yemen with Jabir Hayyan who was a child then. Jabir was entrusted under the tutelage of a reputed scholar, Harbi al-Himyari, who taught him mathematics, Quran, and several other subjects.

Jabir Ibn Hayyan, later on, was tutored by a Shi’ite Imam, Jafar Al-Sadiq who was closely associated with the Abbasids during Harun al-Rashid’s Caliphate. He studied alchemy and medicine under the patronage of the Caliph’s ministers known as Barmecides.

Ibn al-Nadim a 10th century Persian scholar and bibliographer, mentioned in his work, ‘Kitab al-Fihrisht’ that Jabir was an acolyte of the Shia Imam, Jafar as-Sadiq. Another citation by al-Nadim reported that Ibn Hayyan was a member of a philosophical group.

Nadim also cited the reference from a source that of all the books purported to have been authored by Jabir, only one—‘The Large Book of Mercy’—was authentic while the rest were penned by anonymous authors.

It is alleged that of all the treatises attributed to Jabir, the most creative piece is on ‘numerology’ called ‘miza’n or the ‘method of balance’. The central idea of this arithmetical treatise revolved around working out the amount or magnitude of ‘hotness’, ‘coldness’, ‘dryness’, and ‘wetness’ in an object based on its name.

Each and every Arabic alphabetic letter was accorded an arithmetical value, and based upon the letters’ ordering a numeral was assigned to the various “natures”. Jabirian treatises also emphasize that every element in nature had a dual reality, one that was ‘obvious’ (zahir) and the other which was ‘intangible’ (batin).

The body of work credited to Jabir is replete with information that has enriched chemistry, alchemy, and chemical technology, the unrealistic and bizarre facets notwithstanding. Jabirian works contributed hugely towards the time-honored supposition that mercury and sulphur were integral components of identified metallic elements. This claim was buttressed with metallurgical evidence.

The treatises offer comprehensive explanation on how to make the most of ‘fractional distillation’ for extracting metals from their ores and refining them. Jabirian works also laid stress on the composition and chemical properties of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) owing to the compound’s potential to merge with metals known in medieval ages.