Jâbir ibn Hayyân, the « father of written chemistry: myth or reality?

All the books dealing with history of chemistry mention the name of jâbir ibn hayyân as being the founder of arabic alchemy. what is called the jabirian corpus is constituted of a great number of books, but it proved to be necessary to divide these into two different groups. a first part of these books had been redacted directly in latin language, at the end of the 13th century or during the 14th century, by authors who used geber as a pseudonym. the other group of these books had been written during the 8th or the 9th centuries, in arabic, by a group of ismaelian followers of jâbir. these works are sufficient to justify jâbir ibn hayyân’s position in history of sciences.