The History of Lapis Lazuli and the Role of Chemistry in Discovering its Reality

Lapis lazuli, a stone named that extracted in the Iranian plateau. The main source of Lapis lazuli is Sar-I Sang mines in Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan. The stone is dark blue with golden pyrithic spots and a semi-precious stone known in the ancient Persia and is one of the Persian exportation to the world. Many Iranian scholars, including Abu Reyhan Biruni, Ibn Sina, Khaje Nasiral-din Tusi, Johari Neishabouri, etc., have mentioned many of the characteristics of this stone and their healing properties. Iranian artists in the middle age and the renaissance European artists used the stone as a lagoon color (blue indigo) in their paintings. Today, the stone is used to make semi-precious gems, decorative items, paintings, and artistic works and energy therapies. This stone can be studied using modern characterization methods in chemistry. Chemists using FTIR, XRD, SEM, EDS, SR, PIXE methods and combination of them, can determine the structure, source, age, morphology, impurity, composition and history of lapis lazuli