by anyone, and others like them who seek what has no reality, believing that it exists. They die without ever reaching it, even if they find liars who claim to have encountered it.
Likewise, those pursuing alchemy are called “hunchbacks” because they spend so much time bending over to blow the bellows. Most never attain what is forbidden or obtain the adulterated product. Their most accomplished practitioners do attain the product of alchemy, which is forbidden and spurious, though it comes in different grades. Some of it changes after a few years, and some after a longer period. Yet the manufactured product changes and deteriorates, however long that may take, unlike natural gold created in the earth, which neither deteriorates nor changes.
Thus, it is related that Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī, the physician—who upheld the validity of alchemy—made gold and sold it to some Christians. When they reached their own lands, it changed, so they returned it to him. I know of no physician who was more proficient in the craft of alchemy than he was. As for philosophers more skilled in philosophy than he, such as Ya‘qūb ibn Ishāq al-Kindī and others, they refuted alchemy, demonstrated its falsity, and exposed its tricks.
Among the practitioners of alchemy there were none of the prophets, religious scholars, shaykhs of the Muslims, Companions, or those who followed them