Mu'ayyad al-Din Abu Isma'il al-Husayn ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Samad al-Du'ali al-Kināni al-Tughra'i () (1061 – c. 1121) was a

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

and

alchemist Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

Biography

Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Tughra'i was born in

Isfahan Isfahan or Esfahan ( ) is a city in the Central District (Isfahan County), Central District of Isfahan County, Isfahan province, Iran. It is the capital of the province, the county, and the district. It is located south of Tehran. The city ...

, Persia, and composed poems in the Arabic language. He was an administrative secretary (therefore the name ''Tughra'i). He ultimately became the second-most-senior official (after the

vizier A vizier (; ; ) is a high-ranking political advisor or Minister (government), minister in the Near East. The Abbasids, Abbasid caliphs gave the title ''wazir'' to a minister formerly called ''katib'' (secretary), who was at first merely a help ...

) in the civil administration of the

Seljuq Empire The Seljuk Empire, or the Great Seljuk Empire, was a High Middle Ages, high medieval, culturally Turco-Persian tradition, Turco-Persian, Sunni Islam, Sunni Muslim empire, established and ruled by the Qiniq (tribe), Qïnïq branch of Oghuz Turks. ...

. Al-Tughra'i had been appointed vizir to Emir Ghiyat-ul-Din Mas'ud, and upon the death of the emir a power struggle ensued between Mas'ud's sons. Al-Tughra'i sided with the emir's elder son, but the younger prevailed. In retribution, the younger son accused al-Tughra'i of heresy and had him beheaded.

Writings

Al-Tughra'i was a well-known and prolific writer on

astrology Astrology is a range of Divination, divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that propose that information about human affairs and terrestrial events may be discerned by studying the apparent positions ...

and

alchemy Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

, and many of his poems ('' diwan'') are preserved today as well. In the field of alchemy, al-Tughra'i is best known for his large compendium titled ''Mafatih al-rahmah wa-masabih al-hikmah'', which incorporated extensive extracts from earlier Arabic alchemical writings, as well as

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

translations from Zosimos of Panopolis's old alchemy treatises written in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, which were until 1995 erroneously attributed to unknown alchemists by mistakes and inconsistencies in the transliteration and transcription of his name into Arabic. In 1112 CE, al-Tughra'i also composed ''Kitab Haqa'iq al-istishhad'', a rebuttal of a refutation of the occult in alchemy written by

Ibn Sina Ibn Sina ( – 22 June 1037), commonly known in the West as Avicenna ( ), was a preeminent philosopher and physician of the Muslim world, flourishing during the Islamic Golden Age, serving in the courts of various Iranian peoples, Iranian ...

References

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Biography

Writings

See also

References

Sources

Further reading