Hey dear community, I hope you are all doing well so far and your day has brought numerous positive experiences into your life! Today I would like to talk about alchemy and hope you can learn something new.
In keeping with the topic, I have used some pictures of different minerals that should illustrate the topic a little better and in Arabia alchemy had a high priority and, similar to other cultures, it is of enormous importance and has developed into an important occult science. The word alchemy is also derived from the Arabic word al-kymiya and the exact origin of the word has not been fully clarified to this day and one of the origins of hermetics, which is also considered the cornerstone of alchemy, are the well-known emerald tablets of Hermes Trismegistos, which are also known as Tabula Smaragdina. Originally, these writings were also written in Arabic language and translated into Latin in Europe during the Middle Ages and in general, during the Middle Ages, European and Arabic alchemy were merged and many writings were translated. Through conquests by Arab troops, it also came to the fact that numerous writings came into their hands and at that time the Arabs already knew how to translate different writings and through this tactic, much of the knowledge about alchemy from ancient Greece, which together with Egypt is considered the origins of alchemy, came to the Arabs. One of the main goals of the Arab alchemists was to produce gold artificially just like in other cultures and there were numerous attempts and the list of scholars who dealt with the topic is long and well-known alchemists of the Arab Culture are Geber, Kalid ben Jazichi, Avicenna and many more and thousands of different writings were written that had documented the experiments or research.
One of the most important materials was sulfur and the Arabists saw sulfur as one of the superior metals and was part of the teaching which consisted of four elements and alchemy was considered from different perspectives and also self development or spirituality was often in the foreground. The tools that were needed for the experiments have also differed greatly and due to European influences, the influences of natural sciences or the research of chemical reactions were increasingly incorporated into the research. These discoveries were of great importance for development and thus the whole topic changed and previously the experiments were still strongly influenced by magic and the scientific discoveries ensured that the experiments became more and more precise and this change has also been transferred to other areas. Many alchemists from Arabia were also involved in the production of medicine that was obtained from plants and it came to the fact that new methods were found to extract substances and one of the best-known alchemists was probably Geber who had dealt a lot with producing different substances which where an important basis and he has published numerous writings which have gained a high priority in the history of alchemy. Geber has strongly focused on collecting scientific contexts or writing and it can be said that this collection of different knowledge was one of the most important milestones in the Arab world when it comes to alchemy. From some traditions, you can also see the importance of mining in Arabia and, just like other cultures, numerous methods for encryption have been developed in Arabia with which the alchemists communicated
Thanks a lot for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about alchemy! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!