Abu 'Abdullah Jabir Ibn Hayyan al-Bariqi, (c.721-815 AD), Kitab al-sirr al-maknun ('The Book of Hidden Secret', a treatise on alchemy), Western Persia, Mesopotamia or Anatolia, Abbasid, first half 13th century

Arabic manuscript on polished paper, 59 leaves, 11 lines to the page, written in neat naskh script in black ink, keywords picked out in gold, extensive later marginal commentaries in Turkish

In reasonably good overall condition, recently rebound, occasional smudges and patches of water staining, ink otherwise bold and pages generally clean, as viewed.
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This manuscript is a rare and early work by the celebrated Muslim polymath Ibn Hayyan. A chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astologer, Ibn Hayyan is considered the father of early chemistry, known in the West as 'Geber'.

Kitab al-sirr al-maknun is composed of three parts; on the classification of metals, on spirits, and a further explication of the subject of the latter. The treatise begins with Socrates' views on the preservations of solutions extracted from stones. In part two, numerous ancient sources are cited (including Socrates and Pythagoras), and in part three the major authorities are Socrates and Balinas. For more on the text, see P. Kraus, 'Jabir Ibn Hayyan' (Essai sur l'histoire des idées scientifiques dans l'Islam), vol.I: Textes choisis, Cairo: Libraries El-Khandji and Paris: G.P. Maisonneuve, 1935, pp.333-340. A further copy of this manuscript originating from the seventeenth/eighteenth century is in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD (MS A 70, item 25). Although undated, both the style of script and the type of paper used in the present manuscript suggest a production in Western Persia, Mesopotamia or Anatolia in the early thirteenth century.

Abu 'Abdullah Jabir Ibn Hayyan al-Bariqi, al-Azdi al-Kufi, al-Tusi al-Sufi (c.721-815 AD).

Ibn Hayyan was born and educated in Tus, Iran, and then travelled to Kufa in Iraq. His mentor was purported to be the Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq who taught him everything about alchemy, but this is disputed by some scholars (as is the attribution of nearly three thousand treatises and articles to him). He paved the way for later alchemists including al-Kindi and al-Razi. He was known in the West as 'Geber' and his treatises on alchemy strongly influenced the medieval European alchemists. He was the author of the 'sulphur – mercury theory' of metals, according to which six metals differ by different proportions of sulphur and mercury in the contents.

For other treatises on alchemy by Ibn Hayyan or attributed to him, see U. Lyons, The Chester Beatty Library - A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts, volume VIII, Dublin, 1966, p.33 and B.A. Rosenfeld and E. Ihsanoglu, Mathematicians, Astronomers & Other Scholars of Islamic Civilisation and their Works (7^th – 19^th C.), Istanbul, 2003, p.15, no.9. Neither reference book lists the title Kitab al-sirr al-maknun.

There are eleven treatises by Ibn Hayyan in the British Library (see P. Stocks and C. Baker, Subject-Guide to the Arabic Manuscripts in the British Library, London, 2001, p.350. The title Kitab al-Sirr al-maknun is not included in the list. See also Brockelmann, GAL, I, 278-9; Suppl.I, 426-429. This title is not included in the list of eighty-five known treatises by the author.