Al-Kindī’s Attack on Alchemy and His Perfume Making

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between alchemy and making “chemically” processed products, such as drugs and perfumes. We look into al-Kindī’s understanding of alchemy and description of perfume making to discuss this issue. As for the former, Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist mentions his writing on the attack on alchemy, but the original text has been lost. However, his idea is cited in Ḥājjī Khalīfa’s Kashf al-Ẓunūn, so we examine this text to understand al-Kindī’s view on alchemy. As for the latter, we specifically examine distillation technique. Before the examination of al-Kindī’s text, we review the alchemical meaning of distillation from the texts of Jabirian corpus. Then, we investigate the distillation technique in his perfume making text, Kitāb Kīmiyāʾ al-ʿIṭr wa-’l-Taṣʿīdāt to clarify the difference between distillation in perfume making and alchemy.