Editing Jabir ibn Hayyan (section)

=== Historicity ===
It is not clear whether Jabir ibn Hayyan ever existed as a historical person. He is purported to have lived in the 8th century, and to have been a disciple of the Shi'ite Imam [[Ja'far al-Sadiq|Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq]] (died 765).<ref>References to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq occur throughout the Jabirian corpus (see {{harvnb|Kraus|1942–1943|loc=vol. I, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii}}). See also below.</ref> However, he is not mentioned in any historical source before c. 900, and the first known author to write about Jabir from a biographical point of view was the [[Baghdad]]i bibliographer [[Ibn al-Nadim|Ibn al-Nadīm]] (c. 932–995).<ref>{{harvnb|Kraus|1942–1943|loc=vol. I, pp. xvii, 189}}; {{harvnb|Delva|2017|loc=p. 38, note 15}}.</ref> In his [[Al-Fihrist|''Fihrist'']] ("The Book Catalogue", written in 987), Ibn al-Nadīm compiled a list of Jabir's works, adding a short notice on the various claims that were then circulating about Jabir.<ref>{{harvnb|Kraus|1942–1943|loc=vol. I, pp. xvii, xix–xxi, xliii–xlv}}; {{harvnb|Fück|1951|p=124}}. An annotated English translation of this notice and the list of Jabir's works may be found in {{harvnb|Fück|1951|pp=95–104}}.</ref> Already in Ibn al-Nadīm's time, there were some people who explicitly asserted that Jabir had never existed, although Ibn al-Nadīm himself disagreed with this claim.<ref>{{harvnb|Fück|1951|pp=124–125}}.</ref> Jabir was often ignored by later medieval Islamic biographers and historians, but even early Shi'ite [[Biographical evaluation|biographers]] such as [[Ahmad al-Barqi|Aḥmad al-Barqī]] (died c. 893), [[Mohammad ibn Umar Kashshi|Abū ʿAmr al-Kashshī]] (first half of the 10th century), [[Ahmad ibn Ali al-Najashi|Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Najāshī]] (983–1058), and [[Shaykh Tusi|Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī]] (995–1067), who wrote long volumes on the companions of the Shi'ite Imams (including the many companions of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq), did not mention Jabir at all.<ref>{{harvnb|Delva|2017|p=39}}. However, as also noted by Delva 2017, pp. 39–40, note 19, Jabir does occur in two possibly early Shi'ite [[hadith]] collections, which are in need of further investigation.</ref>