2015/09/15 by Nicole Burke, Mitchell Golas, Cyrus L. Raafat +1 · 2 citations
Environmental Science · Arts and Humanities · Chemistry · #Heavy Metal Exposure and Toxicity #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Paleopathology and ancient diseases #Mercury (programming language) #Mercury poisoning #Byzantine architecture #History #Forensic science #Ancient history #Cinnabar #Art #Chemistry #Archaeology #Chloride
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/0025802415601456
openalex publication_date 2015/09/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/22
The puzzle of a mysterious death in the Middle Ages has been hypothesized in terms of contemporary forensic legal and scientific methods. That al-Hasan ibn-'Ali died in 669 aged just 45 has been forensically analyzed based on written sources that dictate eyewitness accounts of historical events. The report of the contemporaneous poisoning of another individual who resided under the same household as al-Hasan's and experienced similar, yet non-lethal, symptoms has served as the beginning of the analysis. In light of ancient (medieval) documents and through using mineralogical, medical, and chemical facts, it has been hypothesized that mineral calomel (mercury(I) chloride, Hg2Cl2) from a certain region in the Byzantine Empire (present-day western Turkey) was the substance primarily responsible for the murder of al-Hasan.