Jabir ibn Hayyan / 贾比尔·伊本·哈扬

Overview

Jabir ibn Hayyan / 贾比尔·伊本·哈扬 appears as a major figure in the episode’s Islamic-world alchemy branch, associated with acids, metalwork, dyes, material classification, and a sulfur-mercury theory of metals.

Current Profile

The source uses Jabir to show that Western alchemy was transformed through Arabic-language scholarship rather than merely stored and returned unchanged to Europe. His attributed framework holds that metals differ through combinations of sulfur, mercury, and elemental qualities, making transmutation theoretically possible if those qualities can be rearranged. The episode also associates his tradition with letter-number speculation, illustrating how laboratory practice and symbolic cosmology could coexist.

Key Characteristics

• Represents the Islamic-world development of inherited alchemical knowledge.
• Joins practical work with acids, metallurgy, and dyes to a theory of metal composition.
• Treats transmutation as rearrangement of material qualities.
• Combines material inquiry with symbolic or letter-based interpretation.

Evidence

• Material practice: 46 古人如何长生不老？东西方的炼金术、炼丹术与长生药 associates Jabir with nitric acid, aqua regia, silver nitrate, metallurgy, and dyeing.
• Transmutation theory: 46 古人如何长生不老？东西方的炼金术、炼丹术与长生药 attributes a sulfur-mercury metal model and cold-hot-dry-wet quality rearrangement to his tradition.

Qualifications

This profile follows a broad podcast summary. The Jabirian corpus has complex attribution, so the source’s biographical and discovery claims should not automatically be assigned to one historical individual. The episode does not independently establish priority, recipe details, or successful transmutation.

What Changed

• Created the page to represent the Islamic development layer in alchemy’s transmission history.
• Preserved the coexistence of practical material work and symbolic theory.

Relationships

• Western Alchemy / 西方炼金术 - tradition in which the attributed Jabirian corpus is a major Islamic-world branch.
• Ibn Sina - critic of genuine transmutation in the same episode.
• Alchemy-Chemistry Continuity / 炼金术与化学连续性 - frame separating technical inheritance from validated theory.