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Article ID: CBB000850609

Listening to the Whispers of Matter through Arabic Hermeticism: New Studies on the Book of the Treasure of Alexander (2008)

Alfonso-Goldfarb, Ana Maria (Author)
Jubran, Safa Abou Chahla (Author)

Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 55
Pages: 99--121
Publication date: 2008
Language: English

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The Jabirian Corpus refers to the K. Thahirat Al-'Iskandar, The Book of the Treasure of Alexander (hereafter BTA), as one of several forgeries suggesting that alchemical secrets were hidden in inscriptions in various places. The book was neglected until 1926, when Julius Ruska discussed it in his work on the Emerald Tablet, placing the BTA within the literature related to the development of Arabic alchemy. His preliminary study became an essential reference and encouraged many scholars to work on the BTA in the following decades. Some years ago, we completed the first translation of the BTA into a Western language. The work was based on the acephalous Escorial manuscript, which we identified as a fourteenth-century copy of the BTA. This manuscript is peculiar, as part of it is encoded. After finishing our translation, we started to establish the text of the BTA. At present, the text is in process of fixation --- to be followed by textual criticism --- and has been the main focus of a thorough study of ours on medieval hermeticism and alchemy. A sample of the work currently in progress is presented in this paper: an analysis of the variations between different manuscripts along with a study and English translation of its alchemical chapter.

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