Hasan al-Rammah's saltpetre purification and gunpowder devices
Purificación del salitre y artificios de pólvora de al-Rammah
- Date
- c. 1280 · confidence medium
- Place
- Damascus, Syria
- Credited to
- Hasan al-Rammah (Najm al-Din)
- People
- 👤 Aiyūb al-Aḥḏāb ar-Rammāḥ1200–1295
- Field
- Conflict
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
His treatise on the art of war gives more than a hundred gunpowder recipes, the procedure for purifying saltpetre with wood ash, and descriptions of rockets and incendiary devices. It is the earliest text of the Islamic world on explosive gunpowder.
Gunpowder is Chinese; whether it reached this region via the Mongols or through trade is debated. The 'egg which moves itself and burns', sometimes presented as a torpedo, is probably a low-flying incendiary rocket.
What it led to
- purer gunpowder in the Mamluk army
- Mamluk and Ottoman artillery
- spread of gunpowder towards the Mediterranean