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Pseudo-Geber (or "Middle Latin pseudo-Geber") is the presumed author or group of authors responsible for a corpus of pseudepigraphic alchemical writings dating to the late 13th and early 14th centuries. These writings were falsely attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan (died 816, Latinized as Geber),. an early Alchemy of the Islamic Golden Age.
The most important work of the Latin pseudo-Geber corpus is the Summa perfectionis magisterii ("The Height of the Perfection of Mastery"), which was likely written slightly before 1310. Its actual author has been tentatively identified as Paul of Taranto.; ; . Cf. ; ; ; . Newman's position is rejected by (also online), who argues that the work was translated from an Arabic original. The work was influential in the domain of alchemy and metallurgy in late medieval Europe. The work contains experimental demonstrations of the corpuscular nature of matter that were still being used by seventeenth-century chemists such as Daniel Sennert, who in turn influenced Robert Boyle.; . The work is among the first to describe nitric acid, aqua regia, and aqua fortis..
The existence of Jabir ibn Hayyan as a historical figure is itself in question,. and most of the numerous Arabic works attributed to him are, themselves, pseudepigrapha dating to c. 850–950.This is the dating put forward by . For its acceptance by other scholars, see the references in . Cf. , also referring to Kraus 1942–1943. It is common practice among historians of alchemy to refer to the earlier body of Islamic alchemy texts as the Corpus Jabirianum or Jabirian Corpus, and to the later, 13th to 14th century Latin corpus as pseudo-Geber or Latin pseudo-Geber, a term introduced by Marcellin Berthelot. The "pseudo-Geber problem" is the question of a possible relation between the two corpora. This question has long been controversially discussed. It is now mostly thought that at least parts of the Latin pseudo-Geber works are based on earlier Islamic authors such as Abu Bakr al-Razi (c. 865–925).
Being the clearest expression of alchemical theory and laboratory directions available until then—in a field where mysticism, secrecy, and obscurity were the usual rule—pseudo-Geber's books were widely read and influential among European alchemists.
The Summa Perfectionis in particular was one of the most widely read alchemy books in western Europe in the late medieval period.. Its author assumed that all are composed of unified sulfur and mercury corpuscles. and gave detailed descriptions of metallic properties in those terms. The use of an elixir for transmuting base metals into gold is explained (see philosopher's stone) and a lengthy defense is given defending alchemy against the charge that transmutation of metals was impossible.
The practical directions for laboratory procedures were so clear that it is obvious the author was familiar with many chemical operations. It contains early recipes for producing mineral acids.. It was not equaled in chemistry until the 16th century writings of chemist Vannoccio Biringuccio, mineralogist Georgius Agricola and assayer Lazarus Ercker.See German article Lazarus Ercker.
The next three books on the list above are shorter and are, to a substantial degree, condensations of the material in the Summa Perfectionis.
Two further works, Testamentum Geberi and Alchemia Geberi, are "absolutely spurious, being of a later date than", as Marcellin Berthelot put it, and they are usually not included as part of the pseudo-Geber corpus.
Their author is not the same as the others, but it is not certain that the first four have the same author either.
De inventione veritatis has the earliest known recipe for the preparation of nitric acid.
Manuscripts:
Early editions:
Early translations:
The estimated date for the first four books is 1310, and they could not date from much before that because no reference to the Summa Perfectionis is found anywhere in the world before or during the 13th century. For example, there is no mention in the 13th century writings of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon. History of Analytical Chemistry, by Ferenc Szabadváry (1960).
The degree of dependence of the corpus from actual Islamic sources is somewhat disputed:
Brown (1920) asserted that the pseudo-Geber Corpus contained "new and original facts" not known from Islamic alchemy, specifically mention of
nitric acid, aqua regia, oil of vitriol and silver nitrate.Chapter VI: "The Pseudo-Geber" in A History of Chemistry from the Earliest Times (2nd ed., 1920), by J.C. Brown. Already in the 1920s, Eric John Holmyard criticized the claim of pseudo-Geber being "new and original" compared to medieval Islamic alchemy, arguing for direct derivation from Islamic authors."Berthelot deliberately wanted to underrate Jābir …, the choice of Jābir’s works made by Berthelot is entirely misleading."
"It is here that Berthelot’s ignorance of Arabic led him astray. As a matter of fact, the Summa is full of Arabic phrases and turns of speech, and so are the other Latin works", cited after Hassan (2005)
Holmyard later argued that the then-recent discovery of Jabir's The Book of Seventy diminished the weight of the argument of there being "no Arabic originals" corresponding to pseudo-Geber, Makers of Chemistry, by Eric John Holmyard (1931).
By 1957, Holmyard was willing to admit that "the general style of the works is too clear and systematic to find a close parallel in any of the known writings of the Jabirian corpus" and that they seemed to be "the product of an occidental rather than an oriental mind" while still asserting that the author must have been able to read Arabic and most likely worked in Al-Andalus.Eric John Holmyard, Alchemy, 1957, page 134: "The question at once arises whether the Latin works are genuine translations from the Arabic, or written by a Latin author and, according to common practice, ascribed to Jabir in order to heighten their authority. That they are based on Muslim alchemical theory and practice is not questioned, but the same may be said of most Latin treatises on alchemy of that period; and from various turns of phrase it seems likely that their author could read Arabic. But the general style of the works is too clear and systematic to find a close parallel in any of the known writings of the Jabirian corpus, and we look in vain in them for any references to the characteristically Jabirian ideas of "balance" and the alphabetic numerology. Indeed for their age they have a remarkably matter of fact air about them, theory being stated with a minimum of prolixity and much precise practical detail being given. The general impression they convey is that they are the product of an occidental rather than an oriental mind, and a likely guess would be that they were written by a European scholar, possibly in Moorish Spain. Whatever their origin, they became the principal authorities in early Western alchemy and held that position for two or three centuries."
With Brown (1920), Karpenko and Norris (2002) still assert that the first documented occurrence of aqua regia is in pseudo-Geber's De inventione veritatis. By contrast, Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan (2005) claimed that Islamic texts dated to before the 13th century, including the works of Jabir and Abu Bakr al-Razi, did in fact contain detailed descriptions of substances such as nitric acid, aqua regia, vitriol, and various nitrates,Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan, Cultural contacts in building a universal civilisation: Islamic contributions, published by O.I.C. Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture in 2005 and available online at History of Science and Technology in Islam
and Al-Hassan in 2009 argued that the pseudo-Gerber Corpus was a direct translation of a work originally written in Arabic, pointing to a number of Arabic Jabirian manuscripts which already contain much of the theories and practices that Berthelot previously attributed to the Latin corpus. (also online).
Authorship
Arabic alchemy was held in high esteem by 13th century European alchemists, and the author pseudepigraphy of an illustrious predecessor, as was usual practice at the time.
The authorship of Geber (Jabir ibn Hayyan) was first questioned in the late 19th century by the studies of Kopp,Hermann Kopp, Beitraege zur Geschichte der Chemie Drittes Stueck (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875), 28-33n. Ferdinand Hoefer, Berthelot, and Lippmann. The corpus is clearly influenced by medieval Islamic writers (especially by Abu Bakr al-Razi, and to a lesser extent, the eponymous Jabir).
The identity of the author remains uncertain.
He may have lived in Italy or Spain, or both. Some books in the Geber corpus may have been written by authors that post-date the author of the Summa Perfectionis, as most of the other books in the corpus are largely recapitulations of the Summa Perfectionis. Crosland (1962) refers to Geber as "a Latin author" while still emphasizing the identity of the author being "still in dispute".
P. Crosland, Maurice, Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry, Harvard University Press, 1962; republished by Dover Publications, 2004 , , p. 15 and p. 36.
William R. Newman has argued that the author of the Summa perfectionis may have been Paul of Taranto,; ; . a tentative identification which is often accepted as likely.E.g., by ; ; ; . It is opposed by (also online).
Works cited
(2025). 9783487142739, Georg Olms Verlag. ISBN 9783487142739 (the same content and more is also available online; a paper with a slightly different title, "The Arabic origin of the Summa and Geber Latin works. A refutation of Berthelot, Ruska and Newman on the basis of Arabic sources", was published in 2011 in the Journal for the History of Arabic Science, 15, pp. 3–54; a paper with the same altered title appears on the author's website)
Paul Kraus9783487091150, Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale. ISBN 9783487091150
(2025). 9789004115163, Brill. ISBN 9789004115163
(2025). 9780226103792, The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226103792
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