Ǧābir b. Ḥayyān as a Touchstone of Arabic Sciences in the 8th Century

The beginnings of Arabic science are related closely to the translation movement from Greek into Arabic, which is considered to have commenced in the latter half of the 8th century. The Ǧābirian corpus, however, which is regarded as a repository of the science of those days along with the Greek heritage transmitted to Arabic intellectuals, has not so far been sufficiently explored. What prevents us from investigating it is not only the complexity of its contents but also of the “Arabic Ǧābir problem”: whether the alchemist Ǧābir b. Ḥayyān really existed or not, when and by whom the Ǧābirian corpus was composed. The Ǧābir problem was once a subdivision of the “Latin Geber problem”, and later became an independent subject, which is a complex problem with the difficulties concerning the reliability of historical sources. If we recognize that Ǧābir lived in the 8th century, we need to presume that alchemical knowledge was transmitted from Greek into Arabic before the Abbasid translation movement; otherwise the existence of Ǧābir in the proposed time would be unreal. Consequently, the attitude toward the Ǧābir problem can reflect nothing but the estimation of Arabic science in its early stage.