The discovery of mineral acids such as nitric acid is generally believed to go back to 13th-century European alchemy. The conventional view is that nitric acid was first described in pseudo-Gebers De inventione veritatis' ("On the Discovery of Truth", after ).
However, according to Eric John Holmyard and Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, the nitric acid also occurs in various earlier Arabic works such as the  ("Chest of Wisdom") attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan (8th century) or the  attributed to the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah (985–1021). 
The recipe in the  attributed to Jabir has been translated as follows:
Nitric acid is also found in post-1300 works falsely attributed to Albert the Great and Ramon Llull (both 13th century). These works describe the distillation of a mixture containing niter and green vitriol, which they call "eau forte" (aqua fortis).