The community of Shiite alchemists that authored works under the name of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān produced a significant literary corpus which scholarship tends to date to the IVth/Xth century. Authors and works of the Ancient and Late Antique philosophical tradition are very frequently mentioned in this corpus, attributing to them a special concern with alchemy. As the seminal studies of Paul Kraus have shown, these works, are pseudoepigrapha, or forgeries, yet they appear to be a reliable reference system – for those who move within the alchemical culture of the time – capable of guaranteeing a principle of authority to the theoretical constructs professed by the Jabirean community. This paper seeks to analyze and understand the cultural dynamics underlying the circulation of forgery and pseudoepigrapha, examining the treatises of the corpus dedicated to a theme that combines the scientific ambitions of the Jabirean community with their political-religious Shiite commitment: the artificial generation. In fact, the Jabirean goal is to create in the laboratory a creature with a legislative nature (nāmūsī al-ṭibāʿ), capable of filling the absence of the Imam in concealment. The paper focuses on how, alongside Porphyry and other ancient Greek authorities, just a Kitāb al-nawāmīs – (lit. Laws) – attributed to Plato could have represented, within the epistemological vision of the Jabireans, which imagines alchemy to the service of a messianic political project, a valid, reliable philosophical-scientific foundation.
Maktabat Jabir b. Hayyan; naql al-ma'rifa al-'ilmiyya al-falsafiyya al-'atiqa al-muta'arikha (wa-ibtikariha) fi a'mal Jabir ibn Hayyan (The Library of Jabir ibn Hayyan: the transmission (and invention) of philosophical-scientific knowledge of the Late Antiquity in the Corpus of Jabir ibn Hayyan' / Capezzone, Leonardo. - In: AL-MARKAZ: MAJALLAT AL-DIRASAT AL-ʿARABIYYA. - ISSN 2772-8242. - 1:3(2024), pp. 219-240. [10.1163/27728250-12340047]
Maktabat Jabir b. Hayyan; naql al-ma'rifa al-'ilmiyya al-falsafiyya al-'atiqa al-muta'arikha (wa-ibtikariha) fi a'mal Jabir ibn Hayyan (The Library of Jabir ibn Hayyan: the transmission (and invention) of philosophical-scientific knowledge of the Late Antiquity in the Corpus of Jabir ibn Hayyan'
leonardo capezzone
2024
Abstract
The community of Shiite alchemists that authored works under the name of Jābir ibn Ḥayyān produced a significant literary corpus which scholarship tends to date to the IVth/Xth century. Authors and works of the Ancient and Late Antique philosophical tradition are very frequently mentioned in this corpus, attributing to them a special concern with alchemy. As the seminal studies of Paul Kraus have shown, these works, are pseudoepigrapha, or forgeries, yet they appear to be a reliable reference system – for those who move within the alchemical culture of the time – capable of guaranteeing a principle of authority to the theoretical constructs professed by the Jabirean community. This paper seeks to analyze and understand the cultural dynamics underlying the circulation of forgery and pseudoepigrapha, examining the treatises of the corpus dedicated to a theme that combines the scientific ambitions of the Jabirean community with their political-religious Shiite commitment: the artificial generation. In fact, the Jabirean goal is to create in the laboratory a creature with a legislative nature (nāmūsī al-ṭibāʿ), capable of filling the absence of the Imam in concealment. The paper focuses on how, alongside Porphyry and other ancient Greek authorities, just a Kitāb al-nawāmīs – (lit. Laws) – attributed to Plato could have represented, within the epistemological vision of the Jabireans, which imagines alchemy to the service of a messianic political project, a valid, reliable philosophical-scientific foundation.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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