Journey of "Chemical"The map shows the journey of the word - "chemical" - across geographies, peoples and time.
From the Greek khemia (the art of transmuting metals) - the word was picked by the Romans - who spread out till Constantinopole around 350AD. And from there, through close and sometimes uneasy interactions with Persia, it creeped into the libraries of the Persian empire - as al-kimiya
When the Muslims from Arabia - in a brilliant campaign - overthrew the Persians, the center of power of the Islamic world shifted slowly to Persian lands. There, the Muslims, masters now - in around 700AD - of domains from Sindh to Egypt, built a great city - Baghdad. The empire spread around the southern Mediterranean till Al-Andalus with the Cordoban caliphate ruling over Spain and eyeing western Europe.
The books also travelled with the empire - and in the city of Toledo - in Muslim Spain - the word was again translated from al-kimiya to Latin as alchemia - later transformed to alchemy.
Around the 1600s, the Europeans began dropping the Arabic prefix and chimicus starts appearing in European literature. And, this is the word which comes to us as chemical in English - and still chimica in Italian.
The word - and the art which it represents - was translated multiple times. It travelled across continents - swimming through Greek, Roman, Arabic, Persian, African and European minds making a full journey around the Mediterranean over a period of more than 2000 years.
This - of course - is true of many more words and ideas and books, which sparked the Enlightenment in Europe.