gems, early lapidaries, early gemology, early mineralogy

Wellmann reexamines the origins of the Pseudo-Aristotelian De lapidibus, building upon V. Rose’s 1875 study and Julius Ruska’s 1912 publication of the Arabic text of Parisinus 2772. He accepts Ruska’s demonstration that the work originated not in Byzantium but in Syria before the middle of the ninth century, but argues more specifically that the stone book was originally not an independent work but part of a larger natural-scientific compilation concerned with the occult properties of stones, metals, animals, and plants and ultimately rooted in the Alexandrian tradition of sympathy, antipathy, magic, and talismanic lore associated particularly with Bolos Demokritos and later Neopythagorean literature. [79] Wellmann identifies a surviving companion to the stone book in the Syriac Buch der Naturgegenstände (Book of Natural Objects), published in German translation by K. Ahrens in 1892. This work, also attributed pseudonymously to Aristotle, treats animals and was subsequently used by Arabic writers including Bar-Bahlul, al-Damīrī, and Qazwīnī. Wellmann argues from similarities of title, organization, and content that it and De lapidibus originally constituted portions of the same work. [80] Further evidence comes from a pharmacological work associated with Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, which draws independently upon both the Aristotelian stone book—including passages concerning the eagle-stone, diamond, and Indian stone—and the Buch der Naturgegenstände. [81] Wellmann regards the parallel accounts of pearl formation in the two traditions as decisive evidence for their common origin; the greater elaboration of the surviving De lapidibus is attributed to later additions and interpolations. Since Ḥunayn (d. 873) used an Arabic translation that must postdate the foundation of Baghdad in 763, while the latest source incorporated into the Syriac compilation dates to about 550, Wellmann concludes that the Syriac original from which the Pseudo-Aristotelian stone book ultimately derives was probably composed around 600 AD. [82]