‘Solving the rumūz’: Mamlūk-era sources on alchemical symbolism

Abstract The use of rumūz – symbols or ciphers – is pervasive across the Islamicate alchemical corpus. Historians have long debated how such symbols should be interpreted, with some emphasizing the spiritual or mystical idiom often employed by alchemists, and others seeking to decrypt alchemical literature for its technical or proto-scientific content. This paper proposes that one fruitful way to approach rumūz is to compare depictions of alchemy drawn from three distinct genres of source material: alchemical treatises, literary works and pedagogical encyclopedias. By tracing how each treats the purpose, form and interpretation of rumūz, I show how these differences illuminate the scholarly practices, pedagogical methods and intellectual positioning of alchemists in the Mamlūk period. More broadly, the study demonstrates the value of widening the evidentiary base beyond specialist treatises, revealing how alchemical discourse intersected with wider literary culture, reading practices and the transmission of esoteric knowledge in the later medieval Islamicate world.