Hasan al-Rammah

Hasan al-Rammah Najm al-din al-Ahdab (died around 1294) was a 13th century alchemist . He is known for his book of fireworks .

Life

Hasan al-Rammah is said to have died relatively early, between the ages of 30 and 40.

The book is preserved in two Parisian manuscripts, which are carefully written and richly illustrated in color. It describes both civil and military uses, fireworks, magic lamps, fire lances, incendiary bombs, incendiary arrows and missiles. The use as an explosive is not explicitly mentioned. There are numerous recipes from other authors, sometimes with the addition that he had tested them, and e.g. B. a recipe to make siege engines fireproof. He attributes the powder and many pyrotechnic methods to the Chinese. He also describes an invention that can be viewed as an iron torpedo and for which there is no Chinese model.

According to Partington, the book also contained a recipe for the production of black powder with potassium nitrate , which was obtained from the purification of nitric (dissolving the magnesium and calcium salt components) with potash (e.g. described by Vannoccio Biringuccio in his Pirotechnia 1540) . Hall contradicts this in the new edition of Partington's book on the history of pyrotechnics (and neither was this known to the Chinese after Hall).

He frequently quotes two otherwise unknown authors, Muhammad ibn al-Shayzami and Ibrahim ibn Sallam.

Fonts

• Kitab al-furusiya wa al-munasab al-harbiya (treatise on horsemanship and war methods), also referred to as his book of fireworks , after 1280, before 1294
  • modern edition: Najm Al-Din Hassan Al-Rammah, Kitab Al-Furusiyya wa Al-Manasib Al-Harbiyya, (1280), editor Ahmad Yusuf Al-Hassan, Publications de l'Université d'Alep, 1998. (OCLC 14270417)

literature

• JR Partington: A history of Greek Fire and Gunpowder, Johns Hopkins University Press 1960, 1999 (with a new introduction by Bert S. Hall)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Partington, p. Literature, p. 200
2. ↑ Partington, p. 203