ON THE ISSUE OF NAMING SUBSTANCES, DEVICES AND OPERATIONS IN AL-RAZI’S TREATISE “THE SECRET OF SECRETS”

Abstract

The article provides a thorough analysis of the chemical vocabulary in Ar-Razi’s treatise “The Secret of Secrets”. In a brief form, the author outlines the entire chemistry of Ar-Razi, which includes names of substances, devices and operations classified by him. Ar-Razi’s great contribution to chemistry requires a re-examination from a linguistic point of view of the many lexemes he introduced, claiming the status of proto-terms. The discoveries of Ar-Razi and methods of distillation improved by him led to semantic shifts not only in the field of alchemy, but also in scientific chemical and medical terminology, since the scientist understood “bodies”, “spirits”, “salt” and “elixir” as real-existing things, rather than conceptual, unparalleled proto-scientific concepts.