d in them a recompense and
a reward for the Khalifate which I lost. I stand in need of no man to
recognise me at court, and I need not recognise anyone who dances
attendance at the portals of dominion either from fear, ambition, or
covetousness.' He wrote a poem on alchemy, which bears the title of
'Paradise of Wisdom,' and of him Ibn Khallikan says: 'He was the most
learned man of the tribe of Koraish in all the different branches of
knowledge. He wrote a discourse on chemistry and on medicine, in which
sciences he possessed great skill and solid information.' He died A.D.
704.

Later on Jaber bin Hayam, with his pupils, became a model for later
alchemists, and he has been called the father of Arabian chemistry. He
compiled a work of two thousand pages, in which he inserted the
problems of his master, Jaafar as Sadik, considered to be the father
of all the occult sciences in Islam. Jaber was such a prolific writer
that many of his five hundred works are said to bear his name only on
account of his celebrity, but to have been written in reality by a
variety of authors. His works on alchemy were published in Latin by
Golius, under the title of 'Lapis Philosophorum,' and an English
translation of them by Robert Russell appeared at Leyden in A.D. 1668.
Jaber died A.D. 766, and is not to be confounded with Al-Jaber
(Geber), the astronomer, who lived at Seville about A.D. 1190, and
constructed there an astronomical observatory.

Astronomy appears to have been always a favourite science with the
Arabs from the earliest times. In A.D. 772 there appeared at the court
of the Khalif Mansur (A.D. 754-775), Muhammad bin Ibrahim bin Habib al
Fezari, the astronomer, who brought with him the tables called Sind
Hind, in which the motions of the stars were calculated according to
degrees. They contained other observations on solar eclipses and the
rising of the signs of the zodiac, extracted by him from the tables
ascribed to the Indian king, Figar. The Khalif Mansur ordered this
book to be translated into Arabic to serve as a guide for Arab
astronomers. And these tables remained in use till the time of the
Khalif Mamun (A.D. 813-833), when other revised ones bearing his name
came into vogue. These, again, were abridged by Abul Ma'shar
(Albumasar, died A.D. 885-886), called the prince of Arabian
astrologers, who, however, deviated from them, and inclined towards
the system of the Persians and of Ptolemy. This second revision was
more