Balinus

The Sirr al-khalīqa wa-ṣanʿat al-ṭabīʿa (The Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature) is an Arabic compendium of alchemy and natural philosophy. Although the work was likely composed by a heterodox Muslim author in the ninth century CE, it presents itself as a repository of ancient Hermetic wisdom discovered by the first-century Greek philosopher and mystic Apollonius of Tyana, known in Arabic as Balinus. One of the most significant scientific works of its time, the Sirr represents an early form of Greco-Arabic thought and became a formative influence on both Islamicate and Western esotericism.The Sirr is divided into six books which treat God and primordial creation, the heavens, stones and minerals, plants, animals, and human beings. The sixth book, remarkably, incorporates an Arabic translation of Nemesius of Emesa’s fourth-century Christian treatise On the Nature of Man (De Natura Hominis). Reworked for a new intellectual context, this version omits explicit Christian theological and biblical references while preserving much of Nemesius’s Greek philosophical anthropology.This volume includes a new Arabic edition and English translation of the Sirr based on the most authoritative manuscript, along with an introduction and commentary. Bringing together Hermetic, Greek, Christian, and Islamic materials, Balinus offers a unique window onto the movement and transformation of knowledge across the medieval Islamic world.