Chemistry in IslamE. J. Holmyard About the Author: Eric John Holmyard (1891–1959) was an English science teacher at Clifton College and historian of science and technology. As a textbook author, he pioneered an approach to science teaching that included historical material. "His historicized science books were a huge long-term commercial success, with Elementary Chemistry (1925) alone selling half a million copies by 1960. In the Middle Ages early Muslim chemists enjoyed a great reputation for their contributions to the field of science. chemistry. The technical language of chemistry is a great problem for all students. It is often obscure. This feature is common to alchemical works in all languages, including Arabic Muslim divisions of chemistry of the time: 1- inspired by the true scientific spirit and which can be interpreted with relative ease by a chemist today 2- those treatises which are mostly mystical books, whose authors use the technical terms of chemistry for express religious ideas. Two of the most famous Muslim chemists are Jabir ibn Hayyan and Rhazes. Many writings assure that the true founder of chemistry as a science was Jabir ibn Hayyan and Rhazes who derived much of its information. from Jabir's books. Other Muslim chemists tried hard in chemistry, but it is impossible to name any other Muslim chemist of the caliber of Jabir and Rhazes. Jabir was a fluent writer and a large number of his books are extant. Unfortunately some of them have been published. Mr. Paul Geuthner agreed to publish a complete edition of all of Jabir's extant works. Most of Jabir... half of paper ......at occupied a key position in medieval astronomy. Outside of optics and mechanics, the medieval world achieved little in physics, the other branches of the subject having not been freed from various metaphysical speculations or generally reduced to mathematical expression. Jabir inb Hayyan commented in the 8th or 9th century on the nature of magnetic force; and although the derivation of the magnetic compass may be Chinese, it was widely used for navigation purposes by Muslims in medieval times. Rainbow theory, in particular, figures throughout Arab physics from Al-Kindi to Ash-Shirazi, initially in terms of reflection on the basis of Aristotelian and Euclidean ideas, and finally incorporating the theory of refraction derived from Ibn al-Haitham .