On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art

by James Mactear

Beginning then at the period of Geber, about 776 A.D., let us try to work backwards and trace, if we can, the progress of chemical knowledge down the stream of time.

While the Western Roman Empire had fallen, the Eastern still held its sway as far as the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and continued the contest with the Persian power for the supremacy in Asia. At this time the various creeds and beliefs of the Arabian tribes—which had been much influenced by the settlement amongst them of Jews who had been dispersed at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and many of the sects of Christians who had been driven from the Roman empire by the more orthodox—were deeply stirred by the new doctrine of Islam, preached by Mahomet, A.D. 622, proclaiming the Koran as the rule of life, and the destruction of the ancient Arabian worship of the stars and sun and moon.

The religion of “the one God and Mahomet his prophet” took deep root, and the injunction to pursue the unbelieving with fire and sword was followed out with such unrelenting vigour that, within less than a century from the death of Mahomet, the Arabian power had extended its sway amongst nearly every tribe and nation that had owned the rule of the Roman or Persian empires, and had reached from Spain to India, from Samarcand to the Indian Ocean.

Egypt and Syria were conquered between A.D. 632-39, and Persia about A.D. 632-51. Their attempts to take Constantinople by siege failed both in A.D. 673 and 716. But they were more successful on the African shores of the Mediterranean, which they swept along till they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and entered Spain in A.D. 709. Their further progress—through France—was stayed by their defeat in a great battle fought at Tour’s, when the Gauls, under Charles Martel, forced them to retire ultimately across the Pyrenees.

Internal dissension had, however, arisen amongst them, and the ruling dynasty of the Ommiades was overthrown in A.D. 750 by the Abassides, who established themselves at Damascus; and with them began that cultivation of the arts and sciences which has thrown such lustre on the Arabian school.

One of the princes of the Ommiades who had escaped made his way to Spain and there re-established the power of his family, with Cordova as a centre, about A.D. 755. Thus it was that the Saracenic power was divided into an Eastern and a Western Caliphate.

It was under the prosperous rule of the Abassides that such an impulse was given to learning of every kind, and that the Arabian school of philosophy, which has left behind it such glorious records of its greatness, was founded. The Caliph Al-Mansour was the first, so far as we know, who earnestly encouraged the cultivation of learning; but it was to Haroun Al-Raschid, A.D. 786-808 (?), that the Arabians owed the establishment of a college of philosophy. He invited learned men to his kingdom from all nations, and paid them munificently; he employed them in translating the most famous books of the Greeks and others, and spread abroad throughout his dominions numerous copies of those works.

His second son, Al-Mamoon, while governor of the province of Kohrassan, we are told, formed a college of learned men from every country, and appointed as the president John Mesue, of Damascus. It is said that his father, complaining that so great an honour had been conferred on a Christian, received the reply—“That Mesue had been chosen, not as a teacher of religion, but as an able preceptor in useful arts and sciences; and my father well knows that the most learned men and the most skilful artists in his dominions are Jews and Christians.”

That this was the case can scarcely be doubted when we consider that the Jews had always been familiar with many arts and sciences, and that, as is well known, at the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when the Jews were dispersed in every direction, they spread over, not alone the countries under the Roman rule, but to Greece, Egypt, and the Mediterranean coast, as well as great part of Asia Minor, carrying with them, not only their peculiar religious traditions, but also their arts, which, we know, especially as regards the working of metals, were of no mean order, and their sciences, of which the so-called magic and astrology had been assiduously cultivated.

In Asia the dispersed Jews established patriarchates at Tiberias in the west, and at Mahalia, and afterwards at Baghdad, for the Jews who were beyond the Euphrates.