THE KITAB AL-ASRAR: AN ALCHEMY MANUAL IN TENTH-CENTURY PERSIA.

In this article the author examines the "Kitab al-Asrar," or "The Book of Secrets," a work dealing with alchemical processes, such as making gold, written in the 10th century by the Persian physician Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. The central focus of the article is the author's contention that the "Kitab al-Asrar" is an early form of a modern laboratory manual and that such documents existed a thousand years ago. The article discusses the organizational structure and the procedural methodology at the "Kitab al-Asrar."