ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Excrement to Experiment. Camel Dung, Philology and the History of Alchemy

• In Event: ESHS Early Career Lectures

English Abstract

This lecture examines the work of German orientalist and historian Julius Ruska (1867-1949), who played a formative role in establishing the historiography of Arabic alchemy in the early twentieth century. Focusing on his studies of salmiac as key substance in Arabic alchemy, the talk shows how Ruska used this material to argue that Arabic alchemy was not merely a transmission of Greek knowledge, but was itself innovative and rooted in experimental practice. By following the mention and uses of the term salmiac across Arabic, Greek, Latin, Persian, Chinese and Indian textual traditions Ruska reconstructed a cross-cultural history of alchemical knowledge transmission. At the same time, he turned to the laboratory to test the plausibility of alchemical recipes, including experiments with salmiac produced from burned camel dung imported from Egypt. His work thus relied on a complex interplay of textual criticism, translation, etymology, historical contextualization, materials knowledge, and experimental reconstruction. The lecture argues that Ruska’s historiography of alchemy emerged from practices that crossed the boundaries between philology, Arabic studies, cultural history, and chemistry. In doing so, it contributes to the early history of the history of science by showing how the field itself was shaped by interdisciplinary and experimental forms of knowledge production at the intersection of the sciences and the humanities.

Author

• Josephine Musil-Gutsch, LMU Munich