Kitāb Ḥall mushkilāt al-Shudhūr

The alchemist Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Anṣārī al-Andalusī, known as Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs (fl. 6th/12th century) is the author of Shudhūr al-dhahab (The Splinters of Gold), one of the most famous poetry collections of Arabic alchemy, which has been the object of no less than thirteen commentaries. The numerous manuscripts of Shudhūr al-dhahab and its commentaries have been read and copied for more than 700 years in various parts of the Islamicate world, from Morocco to India. The very first commenta