Chemistry

What Bible and Qur'an says on Chemistry
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Bible says

1Kings 18:33-38 Fire consumes wet wood, stones, and dust, and "licks up" water.

and

2 Kings 6:5-7 An iron axe head "swims" (or floats).

The very name alchemy as well as its derivative chemistry come from the Arabic al-kimiya'. The Muslims mastered Alexandrian and even certain elements of Chinese alchemy and very early in their history, produced their greatest alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan (the Latin Geber) who lived in the 8th century. Putting the cosmological and symbolic aspects of alchemy aside, one can assert that this art led to much experimentation with various materials and in the hands of Muhammad ibn Zakariyya' al-Razi was converted into the science of chemistry. To this day certain chemical instruments such as the alembic (al-'anbiq) still bear their original Arabic names and the mercury-sulphur theory of Islamic alchemy remains as the foundation of the acid-base theory of chemistry. Al-Razi's division of materials into animal, vegetable and mineral is still prevalent and a vast body of knowledge of materials accumulated by Islamic alchemists and chemists has survived over the centuries in both East and West. For example the use of dyes in objects of Islamic art ranging from carpets to miniatures or the making of glass have much to do with this branch of learning which the West learned completely from Islamic sources since alchemy was not studied and practiced in the West before the translation of Arabic texts into Latin in the 11th century

Some Early Great Chemists

(a). Jabir Ibn Hayyan

     * Known as Geber to the West
     * Wrote on Cosmology
                Astrology
                Music
                Science of numbers and letters
     * Final authority on Chemistry for many many Centuries
     * Classified metals into three classifications
     * Laid the basis of the Acid Base theory

(b). Muhammad ibn Zakruyya ar Razi

    * Prominent Chemist
    * Secrets of Secrets - where he describes
        - chemical processes
        - experiments he performed himself
    * The processes were
        - distillation
        - calcination
        - crystallization
        - he mentions the use of
                - beakers
                - flasks
                - phials
                - casseroles
                - naptha lamps
                - smelting furnaces
                - chear tongues etc .....
    * Credited for the discovery of many acids

(c). Abul Qasim al-Iraqi

     * Disciples of Jabir's school of thought
     * Cultivation of Gold - is a continuation of Jabir's work