"The important salts saltpetre, salmiac, and carbonate of ammonia, first became known and used for chemical purposes in the alchemistic period. Geber was well acquainted with potash saltpetre, as it served him for the preparation of nitric acid; and there is every reason to suppose that it was used in even earlier times for the production of fireworks and such like things, after its property of deflagrating with red-hot carbon had been recognised. The oldest designations for it were sal pctræ and sal petrosum. Raymund Lully also termed it sal nitri, but distinguished between it and nitrum, the fixed alkali of the older writers; in the sixteenth century this latter word was converted into natron, while nitrum was applied to potash saltpetre. Although Geber had already observed the formation of saltpetre from nitric acid and potash, the composition of this salt was only explained correctly at a much later date."
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pp. 51-52.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate
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