Abu al-Salt has written an encyclopedic work of many treatises on the scientific disciplines known as quadrivium.
This work is probably known in Arabic as Kitāb al‐kāfī fī al‐ʿulūm.
His interests also include alchemy as well as the study of medicinal plants.
He is keen to discover an elixir able to transmute copper into gold and tin into silver.
His writings include Risāla fī al-amal bi‐l‐astrulab ("On the construction and use of the astrolabe"); a description of the three instruments known as the Andalusian equatoria; Ṣifat ʿamal ṣafīḥa jāmiʿa taqawwama bi‐hā jamīʿ al‐kawākib al‐sabʿa ("Description of the construction and Use of a Single Plate with which the totality of the motions of the seven planets"), where the seven planets refer to Mercury, Venus, earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; Kitāb al‐wajīz fī ʿilm al‐hayʾa ("Brief treatise on cosmology"); Ajwiba ʿan masāʾil suʾila ʿan‐ha fa‐ajāba or Ajwiba ʿan masāʾil fī al‐kawn wa‐ʾl‐ḥabīʿa wa‐ʾl‐ḥisāb ("Solution to questions on cosmology, physics, and arithmetic"); an introduction to astronomy; and A Summary of Ptolemy's Almagest.
Abu al-Salt was born in Denia, al-Andalus.
After the death of his father while he was a child, he had become a student of al‐Waqqashi (1017–1095) of Toledo (a colleague of Al-Zarqali).
Upon completing his mathematical education in Seville, and because of the continuing conflicts during the reconquista, he had set out with his family to Alexandria and then Cairo in 1096.
In Cairo, he had entered the service of the Fatimid ruler Abū Tamīm Ma'add al-Mustanṣir bi-llāh and the Vizier Al-Afdal Shahanshah.
His service had continued until 1108, when, according to Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, his attempt to retrieve a very large Felucca laden with copper, that had capsized in the Nile River, ended in failure.
Abu al-Salt had built a mechanical tool to retrieve the Felucca, and was close to success when the machine's silk ropes fractured.
The Vizier Al-Afdal had ordered Abu al-Salt's arrest, and he was imprisoned for more than three years, only to be released in 1112.
Abu al-Salthad then left Egypt for Kairouan in Tunisia, where he had entered the service of the Zirids in Ifriqiya.
He also occasionally travels to Palermo and works in the court of Roger I of Sicily as a visiting physician.
He dies in 1134 in Bejaia, in present Algeria.
