In Code We Trust. The Concept of Rumūz in Andalusī Alchemical Literature and related texts
(2018) Alchemy in the Islamicate world — Location: Gotha, Germany (28.September.2018)
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- In the medieval Arabic tradition of the so-called ‘occult sciences’, the concept of ramz (plur. rumūz) for a symbol or a code, acquired special significance in the process by which authors used to consider and to read the texts of their predecessors and also wrote their own works. Closely related to the notion of concealment, the concept of ramz indeed developed in a wide range of contexts, from allegories and allusions to code names, shibboleths, and secret alphabets. In particular, alchemists made rumūz a real topos of their literature. The concept was not only a usual way to express and convey their own ideas and doctrines, but also to understand and interpret texts, alchemical treatises and Qur’ān alike, whether these texts genuinely contained symbolic information or not. In the present paper, we shall seek to analyse the notion of rumūz in tenth-century Andalusī alchemical literature, with a special focus on the Rutbat al-ḥakīm (‘the Rank of the Sage’) by Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (d. 964), as well as on three of its major sources: (1) the corpus of texts attributed to Jābir b. Ḥayyān; (2) the Nabatean Agriculture ascribed to Ibn Waḥshiyya; and (3) the famous encyclopaedic corpus of texts known as Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’.
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de Callatay, G., & Moureau, S. (2018). In Code We Trust. The Concept of Rumūz in Andalusī Alchemical Literature and related texts. Alchemy in the Islamicate world, Gotha, Germany. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/238978