Historian or Alchemist as Etymologist: Case Study of the Title “al-Kīmīyā”

Different historiographies, such as presentist, historio-philosophic, Corbinian and Jungian, have been applied in order to reconstruct the history of alchemy in Islamic societies in the Middle Ages. One technique which can be used, in one way or another, in each of these historiographies, is the etymology. We see that the alchemists themselves and also biobibliographers (Jaldakī, Eznīqī, Safadī, Khawrazmī, Jawharī, ibn Nadīm, for example) have presented different etymologies for the word “al-kīmīyā”. Here, some of these etymologies have been illustrated and analyzed, both from the historic and from the phenomenological points of view.