The Touchstone
object · 3 works · 3 mentions · 4 anchored passages
the touchstone · the money-changer · the touchstone (Lydian stone) · الصراف · القلاب · المحك · الميلق
in the texts
Bayān zaghl al-ʻilm wa-al-ṭalab
The assayer's touchstone and the money-changer's eye, the paired metaphors by which the annotator defends first legal theory and then dialectical theology as the only instruments for telling sound doctrine from counterfeit.
and it is by this touchstone (*al-mīlaq*) alone that the current coin among the questions can be told from the counterfeit.
The counterfeiter does not love him who can tell coins apart, and the flaw in what he holds of corrupt coin — such as the money-changer possessed of discrimination and insight.
Adab al-wazīr
The assayer's touchstone, to which offices of authority are compared because they reveal the metal of those who hold them.
For offices of authority are like the touchstone:
Stromata
A stone believed to distinguish genuine from counterfeit gold, used as an analogy for discernment between true and false philosophy.
And the man who refers each thing to the right life, bringing examples both from Greek and from barbarian sources, this man of much experience is a tracker of the truth and truly "of many counsels," being able, after the manner of the touchstone (the Lydian stone, believed to distinguish the spurious from the genuine gold), to separate — our man of much skill and gnostic — sophistic from philosoph …