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Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of Geber. Five hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle ages, yet we have no certain knowledge of his name, or of the time or place of his birth. Hoefer says he probably lived in the middle of the 8th century, was a native of Mesopotamia, and was named Djabar Al-Konfi. Waite calls him Abou Moussah Djafar al-Sofi.
The principal quarters of the suburbs are Haret el Ambarye, Haret el Wadjeha, Haret es' Sahh, Haret Abou Aysa, Haret Masr, Haret el Teyar, Haret Nefyse, Haret el Hamdye, Haret el Shahrye, Haret el Kheybarye, Haret el Djafar. Many people of the interior town have their summer houses in these quarters, where they pass a month in the date-harvest.
The mosque is a square solid-built edifice of small dimensions. Its dome was thrown down by the Wahabys, but they spared the tomb. The mosque encloses the tomb of Hamze, and those of his principal men who were slain in the battle; namely, Mesab ibn Omeyr, Djafar ibn Shemmas, and Abdallah ibn Djahsh.
To one of these chemists, Djafar, our attention may for a moment be drawn. He lived toward the end of the eighth century, and is honoured by Rhazes, Avicenna, and Kalid, the great Arabic physicians, as their master. His name is memorable in chemistry, since it marks an epoch in that science of equal importance to that of Priestley and Lavoisier.
He sets forth its corrosive power, and shows how it may be made to dissolve even gold itself, by adding a portion of sal ammoniac. Djafar may thus be considered as having solved the grand alchemical problem of obtaining gold in a potable state.
Abou Djafar el Mansour, one of the Abassides, in A.H. 139, enlarged the north and south sides of the mosque, and made it twice as large as it had been before, so that it now occupied a space of forty-seven pikes and a half in length. He also paved the ground adjoining the well of Zemzem with marble.
Among the Saracen names that might be mentioned as cultivators of alchemy, we may recall El-Rasi, Ebid Durr, Djafar or Geber, Toghragé, who wrote an alchemical poem, and Dschildegi, one of whose works bears the significant title of "The Lantern." The definition of alchemy by some of these authors is very striking: the science of the balance, the science of weight, the science of combustion.
Of course, many trials must have been made on the influence of this solution on the animal system, respecting which such extravagant anticipations had been entertained. The disappointment that ensued was doubtless the reason that the records of these trials have not descended to us. With Djafar may be mentioned Rhazes, born A.D. 860, physician-in-chief to the great hospital at Bagdad.
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