Mu'ayyad al-Din Abu Isma'il al-Husayn ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Samad al-Du'ali al-Kināni al-Tughra'i ( ar, العميد فخر الكتاب مؤيد الدين أبو إسماعيل الحسين بن علي بن محمد بن عبد الصمد الدؤلي الكناني الطغرائي) (1061 – c. 1121) was a
poet and
alchemist
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscience, protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in Chinese alchemy, C ...
.
Biography
Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Tughra'i was born in
Isfahan
Isfahan ( fa, اصفهان, Esfahân ), from its Achaemenid empire, ancient designation ''Aspadana'' and, later, ''Spahan'' in Sassanian Empire, middle Persian, rendered in English as ''Ispahan'', is a major city in the Greater Isfahan Regio ...
, Persia, and composed poems in the Arabic language. He was an administrative secretary (therefore the name ''Tughra'i). He ultimately became the second-most-senior official (after the
vizier) in the civil administration of the
Seljuq Empire.
Al-Tughra'i had been appointed vizir to Emir Ghiyat-ul-Din Mas'ud, and upon the death of the emir a power struggle ensued between Mas'ud's sons. Al-Tughra'i sided with the emir's elder son, but the younger prevailed. In retribution, the younger son accused al-Tughra'i of heresy and had him beheaded.
Writings
Al-Tughra'i was a well-known and prolific writer on
astrology and
alchemy, and many of his poems (''
diwan'') are preserved today as well. In the field of alchemy, al-Tughra'i is best known for his large compendium titled ''Mafatih al-rahmah wa-masabih al-hikmah'', which incorporated extensive extracts from earlier Arabic alchemical writings, as well as
Arabic translations from
Zosimos of Panopolis's old alchemy treatises written in
Greek, which were until 1995 erroneously attributed to unknown alchemists by mistakes and inconsistencies in the transliteration and transcription of his name into Arabic.
In 1112 CE, al-Tughra'i also composed ''Kitab Haqa'iq al-istishhad'', a rebuttal of a refutation of the occult in alchemy written by
Ibn Sina
Ibn Sina ( fa, ابن سینا; 980 – June 1037 CE), commonly known in the West as Avicenna (), was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, philosophers, and writers of the Islamic G ...
.
See also
*
List of Iranian scientists
*
List of Muslim scientists
This is a list of Muslim scientists who have contributed significantly to science and civilization in the Islamic Golden Age (i.e. from the 8th century to the 14th century).
Astronomers and astrologers
* Ibrahim al-Fazari (d. 777)
* Muhammad a ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
For his life, see:
* F. C. de Blois, 'al-Tughra'i' in ''The Encyclopaedia of Islam'', 2nd edition, ed. by H. A. R. Gibb, B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat, C. Bosworth et al., 11 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960–2002), vol. 10, pp. 599–600.
For a list of his alchemical writings, see:
* Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Abteilung I, Ergänzungsband VI, Abschnitt 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), pp 229–231 and 252–3.
* For details about Zosimos of Panopolis translations, see:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tughrai
1061 births
1121 deaths
11th-century Arab people
12th-century Arab people
Arab scientists
Alchemists of the medieval Islamic world
Scientists from Isfahan
Arab chemists