In three successive recipes we meet an Arabic word in its native form, without any attempt to translate it—زنبق (zembaq). Its meaning is doubtful, for a reason given by Baron de Sacy: “Le nom zambak est commun à plusieurs plantes. Forskål le donne à l’iris et au lis blanc.”[164]
We have already met with two Arabic words which were adopted unchanged, and are still used, by the Spaniards, alembic and alkitran. There are other traces of Spain.
Roger Bacon observes in his “Greek Grammar” (p. 92) that the alloy auricalcum is in no way connected with aurum, gold, but is a corruption of orichalcum. The Spaniards, however, retained in their language the corrupt form auricalco, and auricalcum occurs twice in the tract.
We may gather from Lebrixa’s explanation of “bitumen Judaicum”—“est quod græce dicitur asphaltos”[165]—that the Spaniards had no special word for asphalt; asphaltum is used only once in the tract, recipe 10. But they used petroleo for petroleum;[166] petroleum is found in recipes 2, 10, and 26. This word, in the form petra oleum, is used in the Anglo-Saxon “Leechdoms,” published in the Rolls Series, which Rev. O. Cockayne, the editor, dates at 900; ii. 289. The Spaniards did not use the word naphtha, which is described by Lebrixa as “el fuego como de alquitran.” Naphtha does not occur in the tract, although it is found in Latin and Greek authors of the first and second centuries A.D.; in Pliny’s “Natural History,” ii. 109 (105); in Dioskorides, i. 101; and in Plutarch’s “Alexander,” 35. It appears as naphathe in the “Speculum” of Vincentius Bellovacensis, 1228; l. i. c. 92. The commonest Spanish word for one or other of the asphalt family, alquitran, occurs (as before mentioned) five times in the tract.
On referring to the Chemical Index, p. 68, it will be found that all the foregoing Arabic and Spanish words occur in the Early Recipes. The Middle Recipes contain only one Arabic word, alambic, recipes 27 and 30, which is also found in the Early Recipes, No. 34; and one Spanish word, petroleo, recipe 26, which occurs twice in the earlier series, Nos. 2 and 10. Now, Spain was the only European country in which Arabic was understood during the Middle Ages. “In all Europe, outside Spain, but three isolated Arabists of that time are known—William of Tyre, Philip of Tripoli, and Adelard of Bath.”[167] Pagnino printed an edition of the Qur’an at Venice in 1530, and it was immediately suppressed by the Church; “a precaution hardly required,” says Hallam, “while there was no one able to read it.”[168] Furthermore, we know that a series of Latin translations of Hebrew and Arabic MSS. were made in Spain between the years 1182 and 1350.[169] We may therefore conclude with some little probability:—
1°. That the Early Recipes were translated from a lost Arabic original.
2°. That the translator was a Spaniard.
3°. That the translation was made between the years 1182 and 1225.
4°. That to this translation were added by other hands, before 1225, the Middle Recipes, which practically contain neither Hispanicism nor Arabism, and which make no mention of saltpetre.
5°. That the Late Recipes were inserted towards the close of the thirteenth century.[170]