A Muslim Discovered Kerosene

Kerosene dispenser

Just as this blog always emphasizes, Muslims have contributed far more to the world than most people imagine. From mathematics to medicine down to politics; we find the foot prints of Muslims.

The chemical substance ‘Kerosene’ is known by several names, these names include: lamp oil, coal oil and paraffin with some of the names being obsolete. Kerosene is a flammable liquid derived mainly from crude oil and is widely used as a fuel in households
especially in the developing countries. Kerosene is the major fuel for the jet engines of air crafts and is called ‘jet fuel’ or Aviation fuel (in that context); it is also sometimes used as a rocket fuel. Kerosene is so crucial to the world that approximately 1.2 million barrels of it is used globally every day.

The process of distilling crude oil (petroleum) into kerosene and other compounds was first written about in the 9th century by the Muslim scientist, Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī. In his book Kitab al-Asrar (Book of Secrets), the physician and chemist described two pathways for obtaining kerosene, he called the whole setup ‘naft abyad’ (white naphtha in English). Ar Razi used clay as an absorbent in one pathway and sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) in the other pathway. He is reported to have used the distilling apparatus called ‘the alembic’. The distillation process was repeated until most of the volatile fractions of the crude oil had been expelled and the final product was very clear and safe to burn. According to a source, kerosene was produced during the same period from oil shale and bitumen by heating the rock to extract oil which was then distilled.

Ar Razi being the first to distill kerosene from petroleum was documented by the Italian translator, Gerard of Cremona, who lived in the 12th century (1114 - 1187 CE). Gerard was a translator of Arabic scientific documents into Latin; he was based in Toledo, Spain.

Protests have arisen as to who should get the credit for this remarkable discovery especially from westerners who want the praises to go to one of their own or at least; not someone from the Middle East.

There have been claims that the Chinese made use of kerosene as early as 1500BC, how true could this be? As far as scientists know, kerosene does not exist freely; it is always found mixed with other compounds. To get kerosene, the crude compound has to undergo a separation process and in this case, the only viable method is distillation. Distillation is only known by historians to have started in the early centuries of the Common Era, how then did the Chinese make use of kerosene in 1500BC?

Ardently, westerners try to give the credits of this discovery to Canadian geologist Abraham Pineo Gesner. What is recorded by unbiased history however is that Abraham Gesner ‘might have been’ the first to distilled kerosene ‘from bituminous coal’, this he achieved in 1846 (921 years after the passing of Ar Razi). All the same, Gesner still has to be given credit for naming the compound ‘kerosene’.

It should be noted that in spite of the possibility of getting kerosene from coal as was done by Gesner, distillation from petroleum is still the most viable source of kerosene in the world today as the coal process proves to be highly uneconomical (expensive). Invariably, Ar Razi’s discovery is what is keeping the world going today (in this context).

Other scientists who have distilled kerosene from known sources are Scottish chemist James Young who distilled kerosene from seep oil in 1848, Polish Pharmacist, Ignacy Łukasiewicz and his Hungarian partner, Jan Zeh; and American inventor and businessman, Samuel Martin Kier, who was the first American to distill kerosene from crude oil in 1854 (over 900 years after Ar Razi did it in the Muslim world).

So, the next time you light your kerosene stove, kerosene lamp or for the higher class; the next time you travel by air, have it at the back of your mind, ‘A Muslim Contributed To This’.