Chrysopoetic Recipes and Chemical Theory in Medieval Greek and Arabic Texts

This workshop investigates Greek and Arabic texts containing or concerning recipes for making gold, asking how and why their authors, readers, and users understood these recipes, as texts (genre), as procedures (what precisely they were meant to accomplish), and as examples of natural phenomena calling out for explanation (why and in what sense they worked). How do such recipes compare to other types of recipes (e.g., for drugs, ink, perfume, or foodstuffs)? How did understandings of chrysopoetic recipes change over time? And what can recipes teach us about developments in practical and theoretical chemistry over the course of the Greek and Arabic middle ages?

The Chrysopoetic workshop series is supported by the DHJP - Dahlem Junior Host Program 2024, Freie Universität Berlin

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Institut für Wissensgeschichte des Altertums, Freie Universität Berlin, J. Cale Johnson

Arabic Literature Cosmopolitan (DFG/Leibniz Prize), Arabic Studies Freie Universität Berlin, Beatrice Gruendler