One of the problems pervading the study of medieval Islamic technology is the lack of surviving technical treatises. Artisans were essentially practitioners of an inherited skill. They worked in industrial quarters, in the narrow confines of the suq or bazaar inside a city, or in more spacious surroundings outside the city walls, where smoke and debris would be less inconvenient for the local population. Rarely able to read or write, they were men of inherited wisdom and experience. Change, if it was required, came through experiment, through trial and error. It was slow and uncertain. Tradition was handed down by example and by word of mouth, and apprenticeships could last for decades. There was therefore no need for texts or manuals.

Fortunately, however, occasional treatises do exist. These are most commonly in the form of lapidaries, like those of Muḥammad ibn Ahmad al-Bīrūnī (d. 440 AH/1048 AD; see appendix 2 below), Naṣīr al-dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), and Abū l- Qāsim ʿAbdallāh Kashānī (fl. 700/1301). Such lapidaries are not confined to precious and semi-precious stones. In the first place they include the magical and medical properties of the stones discussed, reflecting the market for such works. Secondly, and more importantly for our purpose, they often include technical details of metals and their alloys - on the basis that metals, like medicaments, are derived from particular stones or ores (for a general introduction to mineralogies see S.H. Nasr, Islamic Science. An Illustrated Study, Westerham 1976, ch. 4 “Natural History”).

Another written source of information is the manual of the muhtasib, the market inspector. This source has never been fully investigated, though some of the manuals have been published, e.g. the Maʿālim al-Qurba (published by R. Levy in London 1938) of the Egyptian muḥtasib Ibn al-Ukhuwwa (d. 729/1329).