Jabir ibn Hayyan Systematizes Chemical Experimentation

Working in Kufa in present-day Iraq, the scholar known as Jabir ibn Hayyan — or the school of writers attributed to this name — introduced systematic experimental methodology into alchemy. The Jabirian corpus documents distillation via the alembic, crystallization, calcination, sublimation, and the synthesis of multiple acids. Modern scholars date the written corpus to approximately 850–950 CE and debate whether a single historical Jabir existed, but the body of work represents the most systematic chemical classification and procedural documentation produced to that point, and was translated into Latin and transmitted directly into European chemistry.