Al-Tughra'i (d.1121 AD), Kitab mafatih al-rahma wa asrar al-hikma ('The keys of mercy and secrets of wisdom', on chemistry and alchemy), volume two, North Africa, Morocco, 19th century

Mu’ayyid al-Din Abu Isma’il ibn al-Hassan ibn al-Munshi was born in 1061 in Isfahan. His name ‘Al-Tughra’i’ was derived from his position as katib (administrative secretary) under Malik Shah I and his successor Muhammad I. He rose through the ranks and eventually held the second most senior position in the Seljuk civil administration after the wazir. Following the death of Muhammad I, al-Tughra’i was made wazir for prince Mas’ud ibn Muhammad. Mas’ud rebelled unsuccessfully against his brother, Mahmud II, although while Mas’ud was pardoned, al-Tughra’i was unjustly executed (De Blois 2000, p. 599).

Our author was a prolific poet (see his qasida entitled Lamiyat al-Ajami), and medieval sources praised our author’s beautiful handwriting and elegant style, but his academic legacy lay in the fields of astrology and alchemy. The present work is arguably his most well-known text, an alchemical compendium incorporating extensive extracts from earlier Arabic texts, as well as a translation and expansion upon Zosimos of Panolpolis’ treatises in Greek.

The first volume of the text comprises an introduction divided into 5 chapters, while the second part concerned here, covers 7 sections: definitions and symbols; promotion, and what can be promoted; distillation and what can and cannot be distilled; conversions and synthesis; degradation and decomposition; how chemists deduce these facts; and the stages of the work. The work reference Zosimos and other notable Greek philosophers and remains an important document of the chemical knowledge available in al-Tughra’i’s era (See Khadem 1995 for a detailed study on this text).

This impressive volume is extensively illustrated with over 60 pages bearing diagrams, notably illustrating much of the equipment used in al-Tughra’i’s time such as the sublimation and distillation apparatus. A comparably illustrated Moroccan manuscript of a chemical text (Kitab al-Burhan fi asrar ‘ilm al-mīzan of al-Jaldiki) is in the National Library of Medicine, Mayland (inv.no MS. A 7). A 15^th century copy of the text, although lacking sections of volume 2, is published by Khadem 1995, pp. 174-177. See also Brockelmann, GAL, I, 248.