red vitriol

Ingredients

dissolved talc, honey, qalqant, red vitriol, silica, slaked lime, green vitriol, blue vitriol, gum arabic

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

Take one part of dissolved talc, two parts of honey, one part of qalqant (red vitriol) and whip everything in a vessel by hand (p. 222). The mixture is put into an alembic or 'gourd' to precipitate (p. 223). The precipitate is then placed in a long-necked flask, sealed for twenty days (p. 223). During the replication, talc was interpreted as either silica or slaked lime, and red vitriol was prepared by the calcination of green and blue vitriol (copper and iron sulphate) (p. 231-232). Finally, powdered gum arabic is added to the distillate as an adhesive component (p. 232).

Evidence

"Take one part of dissolved talc, two parts of honey, one part of qalqant—and this is red vitriol—put everything in a vessel and whip it with the hand. Then put it into a ‘gourd’ or an alembic, and let it precipitate. (p. 222)"

Remarks

The replication process showed that the silica-based version resulted in an 'intense orange with a shiny metallic glance' that closely resembled gold (p. 233). NMR spectroscopy was attempted but yielded no meaningful results due to the water content in the honey (p. 233). The label 'ḥibr adham' (black/dark ink) in some manuscripts for this recipe is noted as curious given the golden result (p. 222, n. 35).