Editing Jabir ibn Hayyan (section)

=== Dating of the Jabirian corpus ===
Apart from outright denying his existence, there were also some who, already in Ibn al-Nadīm's time, questioned whether the writings attributed to Jabir were really written by him.<ref>{{harvnb|Fück|1951|p=124}}.</ref> The authenticity of these writings was expressly denied by the Baghdadi philosopher [[Abu Sulayman Sijistani|Abū Sulaymān al-Sijistānī]] (c. 912–985) and his pupil [[Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī|Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī]] (c. 932–1023), though this may have been related to the hostility of both these thinkers to [[alchemy]] in general.<ref>{{harvnb|Kraus|1942–1943|loc=vol. I, pp. lxiii–lxv}}; {{harvnb|Delva|2017|loc=p. 39, note 17}}.</ref> Modern scholarly analysis has tended to confirm the inauthenticity of the writings attributed to Jabir. Much of the philosophical terminology used in the Jabirian treatises was only coined around the middle of the 9th century,<ref>See already {{harvnb|Kraus|1930}} and {{harvnb|Kraus|1931}}. This was denied by {{harvnb|Sezgin|1971}}.</ref> and some of the [[Ancient Greek philosophy|Greek philosophical texts]] cited in the Jabirian writings are known to have been [[Graeco-Arabic translation movement|translated into Arabic]] towards the end of the 9th century.<ref>{{harvnb|Nomanul Haq|1994|pp=230–242}} has argued that one of these translations of Greek philosophical texts cited by Jabir actually dates to the 8th century, but this was contradicted by {{harvnb|Gannagé|1998|pp=427–449}} (cf. {{harvnb|Delva|2017|loc=p. 38, note 14}}).</ref> Moreover, an important part of the corpus deals with early Shi'ite religious philosophy that is elsewhere only attested in late 9th-century and early 10th-century sources.<ref>Kraus regarded Jabirian Shi'ism as an early form of [[Isma'ilism]] (see {{harvnb|Kraus|1930}}, {{harvnb|Kraus|1942}}; see also {{harvnb|Corbin|1950}}), but it has since been shown that it significantly differs from Isma'ilism (see {{harvnb|Lory|1989|pp=47–125}}; {{harvnb|Lory|2000}}), and may have been an independent sectarian Shi'ite current related to the late 9th-century [[Ghulat|ghulāt]] (see {{harvnb|Capezzone|2020}}).</ref> As a result, the dating of the Jabirian corpus to c. 850–950 has been widely accepted in modern scholarship.<ref name=datingcorpus>This is the dating put forward by {{harvnb|Kraus|1942–1943|loc=vol. I, p. lxv}}. For its acceptance by other scholars, see the references in {{harvnb|Delva|2017|loc=p. 38, note 14}}. Notable critics of Kraus' dating are {{harvnb|Sezgin|1971}} and {{harvnb|Nomanul Haq|1994|pp=3–47}} (cf. {{harvnb|Forster|2018}}).</ref> However, it has also been noted that many Jabirian treatises show clear signs of having been redacted multiple times, and the writings as we now have them may well have been based on an earlier 8th-century core.<ref>{{harvnb|Lory|1983|pp=62–79}}. For other observations of the existence of different editorial layers in Jabirian treatises, see {{harvnb|Kraus|1942–1943|loc=vol. I, pp. xxxxiii-xxxvi}}; {{harvnb|Gannagé|1998|pp=409–410}}.</ref> Despite the obscurity involved, it is not impossible that some of these writings, in their earliest form, were written by a real Jabir ibn Hayyan.<ref>{{harvnb|Delva|2017|loc=p. 53, note 87}}.</ref> In any case, it is clear that Jabir's name was used as a [[pseudonym]] by one or more anonymous Shi'ite alchemists writing in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, who also redacted the corpus as we now know it.<ref>{{harvnb|Capezzone|2020}}; cf. {{harvnb|Lory|2008b}}.</ref>