Saltpetre reaches the Arabs: "Chinese snow" in Ibn al-Baytar
Ibn al-Baytar, an apothecary and botanist from Málaga who died in Damascus, completed around 1240 a compendium of simple drugs with about 1400 entries. Among them is 'Chinese snow' (thalj al-Sin), and most historians see saltpetre in it. The name itself says where the substance came from.
Earlier supposed mentions are doubtful: the passage in Jabir ibn Hayyan where it was looked for earlier was read by Ruska as barad, hail, and he held that Jabir did not know saltpetre. In the middle of the century the salt appears in a pharmacy book, and by the end of the century al-Rammah is already purifying it for gunpowder.
This card marks the moment when a substance, rather than a recipe, crosses the border between cultures. Before Europe learned of gunpowder, the salt itself had to travel west.
Why this date
reliable for the book, disputed for the identification. Ibn al-Baytar's compendium of drugs was completed about 1240. That his 'Chinese snow' is saltpetre is accepted by most historians (Partington writes 'I think correctly'), but Stapleton, Azo and Husain doubted it. Needham allows that the Arabs knew saltpetre a couple of decades earlier.
Node sources
- Partington J. R. «A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder», Cambridge: Heffer, 1960, p. 310 (1960), 310 Verified 4 Oct 2026
a treatise on simple drugs, mentioning about 1400 items, completed about 1240
- Partington J. R. «A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder», Cambridge: Heffer, 1960, p. 313 (1960), 313 Verified 4 Oct 2026
in ibn al-Baytar, who called it
"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.