Talk:Jabir ibn Hayyan

There are sources in Farsi, which say al-Azdi (as nisba of Jabir) means Yazdi (belonging to Yazd city in Iran), so Jaber is directly a Persian. Other variants of the word Yazd are Ayzd and Izad.

If any one could find a reliable source which denotes this, please add it to the article. Perscience (talk) 14:31, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

:For those who are interested, one (unreliable) source which makes this claim is [http://exb.pnu.ac.ir/portal/home/?1146155/%DB%8C%D8%B2%D8%AF here]. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:54, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

:Al-Azd is attributed to the Arab tribe only. The person is attributed to the origins, not to the country of birth, and Iran is not only Persian Muhsin97233 (talk) 21:32, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Jabir ibn Hayan was a Persian. 83.121.164.64 (talk) 09:23, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

:Jaber Ibn Hayyan, all sources are attributed him to Arabs, not Persian Muhsin97233 (talk) 06:53, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

::Could you please cite a few sources? James.aminian (talk) 16:52, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

::There is no source for that! He was Persian, and his father was also Persian, literally called Attar! During that period, everyone in Iran had to speak Arabic besides Persian, so it is not surprising that he has books in Arabic and Persian. Persiangreat (talk) 06:49, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

:::His ethnicity is well covered in Jabir ibn Hayyan#Biography. Please review the sources cited there, especially {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Kraus|1942–1943|loc=vol. I, pp. xvii–lxv|nb=yes}} (the most authoritative account of Jabir's biography to date) and {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Delva|2017|nb=yes}} (a recent paper reviewing all the evidence on Jabir's biography, affirming Kraus' position that ethnicity is uncertain). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 13:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

According to Ibn al-Nadīm in his Kitāb al-Fihrist (Flügel ed., Leipzig 1871–72, p. 355:18), Jābir ibn Hayyān bears the nisba al-Azdī because he was a mawlā—that is, a non-Arab convert attached as a client to the Azd tribe. In early Islamic usage mawlā was a DEROGATORY label for non-Arab Muslims, marking them as second-class citizens rather than true tribal members, which confirms that Jābir was not ethnically Arab. Paul Kraus likewise observes that al-Azdī signifies clientage (mawlā) rather than blood descent (Essai sur l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam, vol. I, p. xli n. 3), and Henry Corbin notes that in this milieu “mawālī” functioned pejoratively to denote non-Arab affiliation, underlining Jābir’s non-Arab origin (Le Livre du Glorieux de Jâbir ibn Hayyân, p. 50).

1. Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Gustav Flügel (Leipzig, 1871–72), p. 355:18.
2. Paul Kraus, Essai sur l’histoire des idées scientifiques dans l’Islam, vol. I (Paris/Cairo, 1935), p. xli n. 3.
3. Henry Corbin, “Le Livre du Glorieux de Jâbir ibn Hayyân,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 18 (1950): 48–114, p. 50.

James.aminian (talk) 03:44, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

:The idea that he may have been a mawla comes from Kraus (1942–1943, vol. I, p. xli, note 1 - not note 3!), but it is not mentioned by Ibn al-Nadim or any other primary source. The full quote of Kraus pp. xl-xli is "Ibn Wahshiyya déduit de son nom al-Azdi qu'il a dû être d'origine arabe" and note 1 "Ce qui n'est point nécessaire, Jabir ayant pu être un client (mawla) de la tribu Azd établie à Kufa".

:This is modern speculation on Kraus' part, probably as a gesture to his teacher Ruska, who at the time was defending the now-abandoned theory that alchemy originated in Iran rather than in Egypt, and who for this reason was convinced that Jabir must have been Iranian (contra Holmyard, who was convinced that he was an Arab).

:Ever since Kraus (1942–1943) showed that the corpus was written by anonymous 9th-century authors, scholars have stopped speculating on Jabir's ethnicity, which is now regarded as fundamentally uncertain (see Delva 2017, p. 36). This is all covered in the article (Jabir ibn Hayyan#Biographical clues and legend). ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 09:12, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

::@Apaugasma Hi, I really want to question about the sources that I cited and [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jabir_ibn_Hayyan&diff=prev&oldid=1295194927 reverted by you here], If they are not that "More reliable" at all, Please tell me and explain the reason so I won't use these types of sources in future, although I am surprised because I have seen them cited in so many other different articles regarding the "ethnicity" topic. Best. R3YBOl (🌲) 13:27, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Hello {{u|R3YBOl}}, the reason is that they are tertiary sources which in addition are not written by subject experts. This type of source will summarize information found in some secondary sources, but depending on which sources were consulted and which were not, the information will be slightly different. For example, a tertiary source which relies on Holmyard (e.g. on {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Holmyard| 1927|nb=yes}}) will tell you something very different about Jabir's ethnicity than a tertiary source which rather relies on Ruska's papers from the 1930s. That's why you will find some tertiary sources confidently stating that he was Arab, and other sources stating with the same confidence that he was Persian.

:::But on Wikipedia, which is itself a tertiary source, we can directly consult the secondary sources ourselves (which is also why wp:rs explicitly tells us to {{tq|prefer secondary sources}}). The most relevant ones in this case are {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Kraus|1942–1943|nb=yes}} and {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Delva|2017|nb=yes}}, which contain the most thorough reviews of primary sources on Jabir's biography. They both regard Jabir's ethnicity as fundamentally uncertain. Another important point to note is that all the other secondary sources on Jabir, from {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Sezgin|1971|nb=yes}} over {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Lory|1983|nb=yes}} and {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Lory|1989|nb=yes}} to {{sfnlink|article=Jabir ibn Hayyan|Nomanul Haq|1994|nb=yes}}, do not mention anything about Jabir's ethnicity at all: evidently they follow Kraus 1942–1943 in this matter, regarding it as an unsolvable question. Now if all the experts are either silent or explicitly saying it's uncertain, then there is no reason to repeat the mistakenly confident pronouncements made by scholars who have never even examined a primary source on the subject.

:::Tertiary sources are generally reliable and you should not stop using them (especially if you lack access to multiple secondary sources), but in some cases like this one (were all secondary sources have already been reviewed and summarized by other editors), they may not be reliable in context. I hope this helps, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:17, 13 June 2025 (UTC)