Journal de la métallurgie des poudres et des mines

Abstrait

Evidence of the Early Islamic Period's Widespread Usage of Dry Silver Ore and Its Significance for the Development of Silver Metallurgy

Stephen W Merkel

Silver production has had a long-standing relationship with lead metallurgy. It is generally acknowledged that galena, a lead sulphide, was the main source of silver during the early Middle Ages. Galena can occasionally contain up to 0.5% silver, which suggests that tonnes of lead must have undergone rigorous processing in order to extract kilogrammes of silver. This study has discovered evidence that extraordinarily rich silver ores must have played a vital role in one of the major silver-using polities in the 8th and 9th centuries AD: the Early Islamic Caliphate. While all physical evidence from mines, slag, and the metal itself point to this being true. 26 coins were metallographically analysed, and matte inclusions (silver-copper remarkably pure silver [1-5].This silver cannot have been manufactured exclusively from lead ore or through the use of lead, as the matte preserved in the coins could not withstand the highly oxidising refining procedure necessary to separate lead from silver. It is necessary to adopt a new paradigm in order to comprehend early mediaeval extractive metallurgy. The Early Islamic silver supply greatly benefited from the processing of "dry" silver ore, which was composed of practically pure silver minerals. The findings of this study challenge long-held notions about the development of silver metallurgy and have significant technological and economic ramifications. They also have significant ramifications for provenance investigations and the interpretation of data from lead and elemental isotopes.

There are three factors that connect the production of lead and silver Lead and silver minerals frequently coexist, 2. During the ore's smelting, lead traps and safeguards the silver, and 3. Cupellation is a method for separating silver from lead. Critical to the process is cupellation [6-7].Two immiscible liquids, an oxide liquid (PbO) and a metallic liquid containing silver and other oxidation-resistant metals, are created when lead is selectively oxidised above 900 °C. Silver can be refined to extremely high purity and recovered with little loss with this procedure. Even though cupellation has ancient roots, by the Greco-Roman era at the latest, lead and cupellation were widely regarded as essential to the creation of silver across the Classical World.