Maria the Alchemist and her Famous Heated Bath in the Arabo-Islamic Tradition

Maria the Alchemist earned her place in the annals of history thanks to her eponymous heated bath, which consists of a double boiler, the bain-marie. Maria the Alchemist moved from her late antique origins into Arabo-Islamic culture, meanwhile assuming a number of additional features that made her profile more palatable to the receiving cultural context. The bain-marie (ḥammām Māriya), however, is not mentioned in Arabic sources by this name until the seventeenth century, when the Ottoman physician Ibn Sallūm probably borrowed it from the Paracelsusian tradition. An Appendix offers the English translation of some passages from the Ġāyat al-itqān, in which Ibn Sallūm described many applications of Maria’s famous heated bath.