and hymns in their praise, addressing them and prostrating before them, seeking nothing but wealth and power. Such a person disbelieves and associates partners with Allah for the sake of the power and wealth he imagines he will obtain. Yet he obtains only what harms him and does not benefit him, as a survey of people’s circumstances shows.

It is authentically reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, counted among the major sins associating partners with Allah, sorcery, taking a life, usury, fleeing the battlefield, and accusing chaste, unsuspecting believing women of unchastity, as well as other offences, including other kinds of sorcery. Its forms are diverse.

The point here is simply that “sīmiyā,” which is a form of sorcery, is very often associated with alchemy. It is necessarily known in Islam that sorcery is among the gravest prohibitions. Since alchemy is frequently associated with it, rather than with people of knowledge and faith, it is clear that alchemy is not among the practices of people of knowledge and faith, but among those of people of disbelief, wickedness, and disobedience.

All this concerns someone who succeeds in practising alchemy and can spend what he obtains from it without objection. Most of those who pursue it have neither achieved this nor been able to do so. Even those who achieve it once are generally unable to repeat it, quite apart from the harmful consequences that arise.

Anyone who surveys the circumstances of those who pursue it will find confirmation of what the imams said: