| Title | Ancient Persians were Making "20th-Century" Chromium Steel 900 Years Ago | |
| Date | Friday September 25 2020, @04:41PM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the Shiny! dept. | ||
Ancient Persians were making "20th-century" chromium steel 900 years ago:
One manuscript in particular grabbed their attention. Titled al-Jamahir fi Marifah al-Jawahir, which translates to "A Compendium to Know the Gems", the manuscript was written in the 10th or 11th century CE by the polymath Abu-Rayhan Biruni. Crucially, it contained the only known recipe for forging steel in high-temperature crucibles. The problem is, it can be difficult to follow a thousand-year-old recipe.
"The process of identification can be quite long and complicated and this is for several reasons," says Marcos Martinon-Torres, last author of the study. "Firstly, the language and the terms used to record technological processes or materials may not be used anymore, or their meaning and attribution may be different from those used in the modern science. Additionally, writing was restricted to social elites, rather than the individual that actually carried out the craft, which may have led to errors or omissions in the text."
One ingredient, referred to as "rusakhtaj," puzzled the archaeologists. Eventually they identified it as the ore mineral chromite, which can be used to make chromium crucible steel. Importantly, this was backed up by the discovery of traces of chromite and chromium in artifacts from the Chahak site.
Mixing chromium into steel to make tool steel or stainless steel was thought to be a 19th-20th century invention.
Journal Reference:
Rahil Alipour, Thilo Rehren, Marcos Martinón-Torres. Chromium crucible steel was first made in Persia, Journal of Archaeological Science (DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2020.105224)
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