User:Wayiran/Geber

The identity of the author of works attributed to Jabir has long been discussed. According to a famous controversy ,Geber has been considered as the unknown author of several books in Alchemy.

Jabir, the greatest chemist of Islam has long been familiar to western readers under the name of Geber, which is the medieval rendering of the Arabic Jabir, the Geberu of the Middle Ages.

In 1942, Paul Kraus argued that anonymous members of the so-called Brethren of Purity of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam were the true authors of the works in Arabic that were attributed to Jabir, and that they were writing in the ninth and tenth centuries. Syed Haq offers evidence for possible 8th century origin of one text. This was first independently suggested, on textual and other grounds, by the nineteenth-century historians Hermann Kopp and Marcellin Berthelot. Eric Holmyard argues for at least some Arabic origin but not 8th century. Newman showed a distant relationship to the Arabic work of Razi. He argued that the true author of the most famous book by the Latin "Geber," the "Summa Perfectionis," was the little-known Paul of Taranto, writing shortly after the year 1300. The alchemical texts of Jāber (Geber) and Rāzi (Rhazes) which were in Arabic, were translated into Latin in the 12th century. Geber's identity with Jabir is still on dispute, Sometimes called as "Geber-Jabir problem".

It is said that Geber, the Latinized form of "Jabir," was adopted presumably because of the great reputation of a supposed 8th-century alchemist by the name of Jabir ibn Hayyan. About this historical figure, however, there is considerable uncertainty. It is important to consider that it is impossible to reach definite conclusions until all the Arabic writings ascribed to Jabir have been properly edited and discussed.