Chemistry in IslamE. J. HolmyardAbout the Author:Eric John Holmyard (1891-1959) was a professor of English at Clifton College and a historian of science and technology. As a textbook author, he pioneered an approach to science teaching that included historical material. "His historicized scientific books were a huge and long-term commercial success, with Elementary Chemistry (1925) alone selling half a million copies by 1960. In medieval times, early Muslim chemists enjoyed a great reputation for their contributions to the field of chemistry. The technical language of chemistry is a great problem for all students. This characteristic is common to alchemical works in all languages, including the. Arabic. Scholars are astonished when they come to read the first Muslim books of chemistry at this time: 1- Those which are inspired by the true scientific spirit and can be interpreted with relative ease by a chemist of today. hui. 2 - these treatises which are mostly mystical books, whose authors use the technical terms of chemistry to express religious ideas. Two of the most famous Muslim chemists are Jabir ibn Hayyan and Rhazes. Many writings assure that the true founder of chemistry as a science was Jabir ibn Hayyan and Rhazes who derived much of his information. Jabir's books. Other Muslim chemists have made great efforts in chemistry, but it is impossible to name another Muslim chemist of the caliber of Jabir and Rhazes. Jabir was a fluent writer and many of his books exist. Unfortunately, a few of them have been published. Mr. Paul Geuthner has agreed to publish a complete edition of all of Jabir's works that exist. Middle of paper Jabir occupied a key position in medieval astronomy. Apart from optics and mechanics, the medieval world accomplished little in physics, the other branches of the subject having neither been freed from various metaphysical speculations nor generally reduced to mathematical expression. Jabir inb Hayyan commented in the 8th or 9th century on the nature of magnetic force; and although the origin of the magnetic compass may be Chinese, it was first widely used for navigational purposes by Muslims in medieval times. The rainbow theory, in particular, features in Arabic physics from Al-Kindi to Ash-Shirazi, initially in terms of reflection. based on Aristotelian and Euclidean ideas, and finally incorporating the theory of refraction derived from Ibn al-Haitham .