Similar thoughts led the Arab historian ibn-Khaldūn in 1376 to argue against the possibility of chrysopoeia on the grounds that if true, it would foil God’s plan for maintaining economic stability in the world—namely, His divinely wise choice to create only a limited quantity of gold and silver.28 Lawyers continued to debate the licitness of alchemy and the legality of its products from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century.29
