| Abstract: |
An almost unknown treatise describing the making and heat-treating of steel made in small clay crucibles by the famous Iraqi scholar Yacūb al-Kindī (c. 800-870), hereafter referred to as Kindi, has recently come to light. This treatise was evidently compiled as a kind of technical appendix to Kindis well-known sword treatise - written in Baghdad for al-Mutasim, the 3rd Abbasid Caliph (832-841). This gives details of many places, in the Middle-East and further afield, where crucible steel was made and compares the qualities of the metal from different places, but gives no information about how it was made, and very little about how it was treated (Hoyland and Gilmour 2006). This puzzling aspect of Kindis first treatise is explained by the content of his second treatise on this subject which contains nine recipes for crucible steel and various details about how this should be heat-treated. The aim of this paper is to look at the content of Kindis second treatise, to see how it compares to other surviving medieval and earlier descriptions or recipes for the making of crucible steel and the ways in which it was heat-treated, and also to consider the possible origin of Kindis information and the antiquity of this method of steel making.
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