Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance

Notes

1

See G. Saliba, "Science before Islam" in The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, vol. 4: Science and Technology in Islam, ed. A. Al-Hassan, M. Ahmad, and A. Iskandar, part 1, The Exact and Natural Sciences (UNESCO, 2001), pp. 27-49.

2

A brief formulation of this contact theory, as expressed by G. E. von Grunebaum, goes as follows: "The tendencies inherent in the origins of Islam were to mature under the influence of those, in a sense, accidental contacts which grew out of the historical setting of the period and, more specifically, the conquest by the Muslims of the high-civilization areas in Persia, Syria, and Egypt." (Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition, Greenwood, 1981, p. 12f., emphasis added) For other formulations of these contacts, see Christopher Toll, "Arabische Wissenschaft und Hellenistisches Erbe", ed. A. Mercier (Herbert Lang, 1976), pp. 31-57. Even modern Arabic writings reflect this understanding. See, for example, 'Abd al-Ghanī, Musṭafā Labīb, Dirāsāt fī tārīkh al-'ulūm 'inda al-Arab, vol. 1 (Dār al-Thaqāfa, 2000), p. 43.

3

In fact the cultural conditions in Byzantium during a century and a half (641-780) accompanying and immediately following the rise of Islam in the early part of the seventh century are usually designated by Byzantinists themselves in expressions ranging from centuries of "negligible traces" to centuries of "Dark Age." See, for example, Alexander Jones, "Later Greek and Byzantine Astronomy" in Astronomy before the Telescope", ed. C. Walker (St. Martin's Press, 1996), p. 104: "The century and half between the reign of Heraclius and the beginning of the ninth century has left us negligible traces of astronomical writings." See also Warren Treadgold, "The Struggle for Survival (641-780)" in The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. C. Mango (Oxford University Press, 2002). Some would even go back another century or two to include the sixth and seventh centuries as Dark Ages, as was done most recently by Timothy Gregory in A History of Byzantium (Blackwell, 2005). Later more "enlightened" centuries like the ninth century still formed the subject of symposia such as Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? ed. L. Brubaker (Ashgate, 1998). See also Irfan Shahid, "Islam and Byzantium in the IX century: The Baghdad, Constantinople Dialogue" in Cultural Contacts in Building a Universal Civilization: Islamic Contributions, ed. E. İhsanoğlu (Istanbul, 2005). As for Sasanian Iran not much is known of its intellectual production for the same period, and whatever sciences were cultivated there were only translated into Arabic during the latter part of the eighth and early part of the ninth centuries only to be discarded very quickly in favor of the classical Greek sciences that came to replace them. The few books that stand out from the pre-Islamic period, like the zīj-i shāh-i, or zīj-i Shāhriyār, of which we only have reports from later astronomers who worked in Islamic times, and the Kalila wa Dimna which was translated by Ibn al-Muqaffa' in the eighth century were indeed similar to the much more elementary astronomical and literary texts that one encounters during the dark ages of Byzantium, or the contemporary Syriac texts, which were very well known at the time.

4

Sure one could point to such works as those of Proclus (mid fifth century), especially his Hypotyposis, or the slightly later Ammonius (fifth century - mid sixth century), or Philoponus (early sixth century), or even Olympiodorus (mid sixth century), but those were either elementary works, or dealt with astrology rather than astronomy. Even Leo the Mathematician's work itself when looked at closely by Alexander Jones ("Later Greek and Byzantine Astronomy" in Astronomy before the Telescope", ed. C. Walker, St. Martin's Press, 1996, p. 104), was deemed "questionable [in terms of] Leo's ability to interpret highly technical works, for his own surviving writings are meager and unimpressive."

5

For the treatise of Ḥunain in which he recounts his searches for Galenic texts, see Gotthelf Bergstrasser, Ḥunain b. Isḥāq, Über die Syrischen und Arabischen Galenübersetzungen (Leipzig, 1925).

6

Examples illustrating this pocket theory abound. Any source that mentions the survival of Hellinism in such major centers as Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, Ḥarrān, Jundishāpūr, etc. would be a good candidate for that purpose. A very recent version of that theory is embedded in L. E. Goodman's essay "The Translation of the Greek materials into Arabic" in the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Religion Learning and Science in the Abbasid Period (Cambridge University Press, 1990). In modern Arabic writings those pockets were at times given more significance by referring to them as schools. See, for example, Rashīd al-Jumaylī, Ḥarakat ai-tarjama fī al-mashriq al-islāmī fī al-qarnain al-thālith wa-l-rābi' li-l-hijra, al-kitāb (Tripoli, 1982), p. 178f. Despite the shortcomings of this theory one should, nevertheless, give it more credit but insist on adding the caveat that allows for a distinction between the survival of such cultural aspects as religion, art, and music, aspects that may have survived in those centers, and the more rigorous aspects of science and philosophy that require much debate and apprenticeship in an open society that would encourage such studies. The conditions of the Byzantine empire, even in its better (?) days during the ninth century, when it was already in contact with the more advanced Islamic world at the time, are best illustrated by the life of the famous Leon the Philosopher/Mathematician that is excellently related by Paul Lemerle in Le Premier Humanisme Byzantin (Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), where we are told (p. 148f.) that Leon could only study grammar and poetics in the capital city of Constantinople. For more rudimentary instruction in the other sciences he had to travel to other less important places where he would obtain the basics of these sciences from one individual at a time. The story goes on to tell of the great efforts Leon had to exert in order to get instructed in the other sciences, only to be severely attacked for that endeavor by his own student Constantine the Sicilian who says of him that he "enseigné toute cette science profane dont les anciens se sont enorgueillis, et qui a perdu son âme dans cette mer d'impiété" (Lemerle, p. 173).

7

For a brilliant chapter on the first "Byzantine Humanism", which witnessed the revival of interest in Greek scientific manuscripts and their transfer to minuscule hand at an extensive scale during the ninth century for the translation market of Baghdad, see Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (Routledge, 1998), pp. 175-186.

8

In fact Alexander Jones ("Later Greek and Byzantine Astronomy", p. 105) says the following about those manuscripts: "But this paucity of corrections by scribe or owner also suggest that, for all their splendor, these manuscripts were more for display than for study. Original writings from the ninth and tenth centuries, whether in the margins of those extant contemporary codices or in later copies, are pitiful and scarce. One concludes that practical understanding of astronomy was sustained by few besides astrologers, whose working copies of the old texts were presumably more perishable than the bibliophile's treasures that have come down to us, but whose existence is revealed by the odd horoscope or anecdote."

9

See "Cosmology" in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 537, where the views of this Cosmas are claimed to have been characteristic of those of the "school" of Antioch, one of the major alleged pockets for the transfer of Hellenistic knowledge to Islam.

10

See G. Saliba, "Paulus Alexandrinus in Syriac and Arabic", Byzantion, 1995, 65: 440-454.

11

Still preserved in the work of the thirteenth-century bio-bibliographer Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a, 'Uyūn al-Anbā' fī Ṭabaqāt al-Aṭibbā', ed. Richard Muller, Konigsberg, 1884, vol. 2, p. 134ff.

12

Max Meyerhof, "Von Alexandrien nach Bagdad: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des philosophischen und medizinischen Unterrichts den Araben", Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philologisch-historische Klasse, 1930: 389-429.

13

Paul Lemerle, Le Premier Humanisme Byzantin: Notes et remarques sur enseignement et culture à Byzance des origins au X^e siècle (Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), p. 25.

14

See the detailed entry in the supplement of the Encyclopedia Iranica for Paul the Persian and his works, available at http://www.iranica.com. For much more extensive treatment and citation of relevant literature see also the article of Dimitri Gutas, "Paul the Persian on the Classifications of the Parts of Aristotle's Philosophy: A Milestone between Alexandria and Baghdad", Der Islam 60 (1983): 231-267, especially the note on p. 239 discussing the identity of this Paul, and the decision on the one Paul who apparently wrote "the Syriac introduction to Logic". The following note in the same article, and note 29 on page 244, suggest "that the Introduction to Logic also was initially composed in Pehlevi." If the latter remark is true then Syriac may have acted in this instance as an intermediary between Pehlevi and Arabic rather than Greek and Arabic, which may very well be the case. This does not affect, however, the elementary nature of the contents of the treatise when compared to the classical sources.

15

See Saliba, "Paulus Alexandrinus."

16

F. Nau, "Le traité de l'astrolabe plan de Sévère Sébokt, publié pour la première fois d'aprés un Ms. de Berlin", Journal Asiatique, 13 (1899), 56-101, 238-303.

17

For his astronomical works that relate more to ancient folk Babylonian science rather than to sophisticated Greek science, see V. Ryssel, "Die Astronomischen Briefe Georgs des Araberbischofs", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete 8 (1893): 1-55, and Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy [HAMA], Springer-Verlag, 1975, pp. 597, 707, 720.

18

See F. Nau, "La plus ancienne mention orientale des chiffres indiens", Journal Asiatique 16 (1910): 225-227.

19

Ibid.

20

See Goodman, "Translation", p. 478.

21

See the account of Muḥammad Diyāb al-İtlīdī, I'lām al-nās bi-mā waqa'a li-l-barāmika ma'a banī al-'abbās, Beirut, 1990, p. 244f.

22

Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, pp. 36-41.

23

See al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, p. 393. In what follows the various references to this work will be to the edition of Yūsuf 'Alī Ṭawīl, Beirut, 1996, and will be simply designated as Fihrist, unless otherwise stated.

24

For a short analysis of this zīj and a bibliography of other assessments of its importance, see E. S. Kennedy, "A Survey of Islamic Astronomical Tables", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, 46, no. 2 (1956), p. 129f. See also D. Pingree, "The Greek Influence on Early Islamic Mathematical Astronomy", Journal of the American Oriental Society 93 (1973): 32-43.

25

See C. Nallino, 'Ilm al-Falk: Tārīkhuhu 'ind al-'Arab fī al-qurūn ai-wusṭā (Rome, 1911), pp. 193-196.

26

Now available in the Arabic version with English translation and Greek fragments (D. Pingree, Dorotheus Sidonius Carmen Astrologicum, Teubner, 1976).

27

This story is elegantly parsed and deconstructed by Gutas (Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, pp. 75-105, esp. 97f.). I used the Arabic version of the story that was preserved in the Fihrist, p. 397f.

28

On both of these terms, the Mu'tazila and their miḥna, see Encyclopedia of Islam, new edition (hereafter cited as EI²), s.v. "Mu'tazila" and "miḥna".

29

EI², vol. I, p. 272f.

30

A note on the title page of one of the Arabic translations of the Almagest, now kept at the Library of Leiden University (Or. 680), reads "This book was translated by the order of the imam al-Ma'mūn 'Abdallāh, the commander of the faithful".

31

See, for example, Géographie d'Aboulféda, ed. M. Reinaud, that is, Abū al-Fidā', Taqwīm al-Buldān, Paris, 1840, p. 14.

32

For the status of the manuscripts in Constantinople at that time, and the level of science in that city, see Gutas, Greek Thought, pp. 175-186, and refer to the anecdote of Leo the Mathematician mentioned before.

33

See, for example, the reports about the patronage of the three sons of Mūsā during the caliphate of al-Mutawakkil as reported by Ḥunain b. Isḥāq, the main translator of the period, in the treatise edited by Bergstrasser, and their undertaking of the digging of canals which they apparently sub-contracted in one instance to their protégé Ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī (d. after 861). The account of this failed project and the rescue of Banū Mūsā by the mathematician and engineer Sanad Ibn 'Alī (d. 864) is recounted in Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a's Ṭabaqāt al-Aṭibbā', vol. I, p. 207f.

34

See, for example, the work of the eleventh-century polymath Abū al-Raiḥān al-Bīrūnī, Chronology of Ancient Nations, ed. E. Sachau, p. 263.

35

On the role played by those astrologers in appropriating the Indian sources under the patronage of the caliph al-Manṣūr, see Nallino, pp. 141-215.

36

On the surviving fragments from the works of those two astronomers, see David Pingree, "The Fragments of the Works of al-Fazārī", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 29 (1970), pp. 103-123; Pingree, "The Fragments of the Works of Ya'qūb ibn Ṭāriq", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 26 (1968): 97-125.

37

See al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p. 437.

38

Fihrist, p. 400

39

For the report on the Almagest translation during the time of Khālid al-Barmakī, see Fihrist, p. 430. The less likely report about the role of al-Manṣūr in the transmission of the Almagest is preserved in several texts, among them the text of al-Mas'udī, Murūj al-Dhahab (Les Prairies d'Or), ed. C. Barbier de Meynard, Paris, 1874, vol. 8, p. 291.

40

See the edition and translation of this work by Frederic Rosen, The Algebra of Mohammed ben Musa, London, 1831, reprt. 1986, and for the originality of Khwārizmī see Roshdi Rashed, "l'Idée de l'Algèbre Selon al-Khwārizmī", Fundamenta Scientiae 4 (1983): 87-100.

41

For a similar argument see Carl Boyer, A History of Mathematics (New York, 1968), reprt. 85, p. 252.

42

F. Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, vol. VI (Leiden, 1978), p. 182.

43

Roshdi Rashed, I'Art de l'Algèbre de Diaphonte, Arabic text first edited and published in Cairo, 1975, and then re-edited and translated into French by Rashed as well, and published in Paris 1984. See also Rashed, "Problems of the Transmission of Greek Scientific Thought into Arabic: Examples from Mathematics and Optics", History of Science 27 (1989), pp. 199-209, reprinted in Roshdi Rashed, Optique et mathématique (Variorum, 1992), esp. p. 203f.

44

For this specific projection of Ḥabash, see E. S. Kennedy, P. Kunitzsch, and R. P. Lorch, The Melon-Shaped Astrolabe in Arabic Astronomy, Stuttgart, 1999. For a survey of his trigonometric and astronomical works with further bibliographical references, see Marie-Thérèse Debarnot, "The Zīj of Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib: A Survey of Ms Istanbul Yeni Cami 784/2", in From Deferent to Equant: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 500 (1987): 35-69. For more precise developments in trigonometric functions, see Kennedy, Survey of Islamic Astronomical Tables, p. 151f. For a much longer study of the type of projections produced by Ḥabash and their impact on later generations, see David King, World-Maps for Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca: Innovation and Tradition in Islamic Science, Brill, 1999.

45

A. S. Saidan, The Arithmetic of al-Uqlīdisī, Boston, 1978, p. 343.

46

To his credit a similar position is held by Roshdi Rashed in his "Problems of the Transmission", where he speaks of a translation period preceding Abbāsid times, but characterized as "individual initiatives", and goes on to claim that the translation movement had to wait for the second period of "incomparable importance... [when] translation has become a part of a much wider activity that may be designated by the evocative title "the institutionalization of science", p. 200. Unfortunately though, Rashed explains the translation movement of the early Abbāsids as dependent on the desires of the caliphs and the abundant existence of scientists without explaining how such desires and scientists came about. A. I. Sabra also proposes a similar explanation in his thought-provoking article "The Appropriation", where to his credit too, Sabra speaks in this article of a process of "appropriation" rather than "contact" or encounter of "pockets" and one can read him to say that Islamic civilization sought the ancient classical Greek texts and did not satisfy itself with what was available in Byzantium at the time.

47

Ptolemy, Almagest, I.15. G. Toomer, Ptolemy's Almagest, New York, 1984, p. 72.

48

See A Concise History of Science in India, ed. D. Bose, S. Sen, and B. Subbarayappa, New Delhi, 1971, p. 107

49

See Kennedy, Survey, p. 145, for the value 23;33° in the mumtaḥan zīj, and pages 151, 153, and 154, for the value 23;35° in the works of Ḥabash, and al-Battānī from the next century.

50

For the values of 1/66 years or 1/70 years, see Kennedy, Survey, p. 146. For tabulations of the other values in the same and other zījes, see ibid., p. 150f.

51

For the theoretical critique of Muḥammad, see G. Saliba, "Early Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Cosmology: A Ninth-Century Text on the Motion of the Celestial Spheres", Journal for the History of Astronomy 25 (1994): 115-141. For the critique of observational methodology by the three brothers or someone in their circle, see O. Neugebauer, Thābit Ben Qurra "On the Solar Year" and "On the Motion of the Eighth Sphere", translation and commentary, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106 (1962): 264-299, and Régis Morelon, Thābit Ibn Qurra: Oeuvres d'Astronomie, Paris, 1987, pp. xlvi-lxxv, 26-67, 189-215.

52

Neugebauer, "Thābit"; Morelon, Thābit; Saliba, "Early Arabic."

53

Jazarī's major work al-Jāmi' bain al-'ilm wa-l-'amal al-nāfi' fī ṣinā'at al-ḥiyal (Combining Theory and Useful Practice in the Craft of Mechanical Arts) was first translated into English by Donald Hill as The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, Dordrecht 1974, and only later edited by Aḥmad Yousef al-Ḥassan, under the full Arabic title, Aleppo, 1979. See also my review of the field and the importance of Jazarī's Arabic title in G. Saliba, "The Function of Mechanical Devices in Medieval Islamic Society", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 441 (1985): 141-151. Furthermore, see Aḥmad al-Ḥassan and Donald Hill, Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History, UNESCO and Cambridge University Press, 1986.

54

EI², I, 98.

55

For the works of this astronomer see the critical edition of his major work and the various bibliographical references to his other works in G. Saliba, The Astronomical Work of Mu'ayyad al-Dīn al-'Urḍī (d. 1266): A Thirteenth Century Reform of Ptolemaic Astronomy, 'Urḍī's Kitāb al-Hay'a, Beirut, 1990, 1995, third corrected edition 2001. See other references to him as well as to other astronomers of this later period in G. Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam, New York, 1994.

56

Ṭūsī's major astronomical work al-Tadhkira is now edited with a translation and commentary by F. J. Ragep, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's Memoir on Astronomy, New York, 1993.

57

The prolific production of this astronomer is manifest, with his three major astronomical works, each exceeding 200 folios in the various copies of the extant manuscripts. That extensive production itself may have made the critical editions of his works a prohibitive task. But enough of his novel ideas have been extracted and published in several publications. See, for example, E. S. Kennedy, "Late Medieval Planetary Theory", Isis 57 (1966): 365-378, esp. pp. 371-377, and G. Saliba, "The Original Source of Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī's Planetary Model", Journal for the History of Arabic Science 3 (1979): 3-18. For more information on this astronomer, see Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 11, New York, 1975, pp. 247-253.

58

Although much about the works of this astronomer is known, his major theoretical work on planetary astronomy, kitāb nihāyat al-sūl fī taṣḥīḥ al-uṣūl (The Ultimate Quest in the Rectification of [Astronomical] Principles), has just been edited by the present writer and still awaits publication. What has appeared in print are descriptions of this astronomer's works and had been gathered together by E. S. Kennedy and Imad Ghanim in The Life and Work of lbn al-Shāṭir, Aleppo, 1976, to which should be added G. Saliba, "Theory and Observation in Islamic Astronomy: The Work of Ibn al-Shāṭir of Damascus (1375)", Journal for the History of Astronomy 18 (1987): 35-43, and Dictionary of Scientific Biography, volume 12, 1975, pp. 357-364.

59

One of the major theoretical astronomical works of this astronomer has been published by the present writer in G. Saliba, "Al-Qushjī's Reform of the Ptolemaic Model for Mercury", Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3 (1993): 161-203.

60

The fecundity of this astronomer is similar to that of Shīrāzī, and like him many of his works remain unpublished. The present author has devoted a series of articles to him in an attempt to make some of his ideas at least known. The most important of those articles are the following: G. Saliba, "A Sixteenth-Century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy: The Work of Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī", Journal for the History of Astronomy 25 (1994): 15-38; Saliba, "A Redeployment of Mathematics in a Sixteenth- Century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy", in Perspectives arabes et médiévales sur la tradition scientifique philosophique grecque. Actes du Colloque de la S.I.H.S.P.A.I. (Société internationale d'histoire des sciences et de la philosophie arabe et Islamique), Paris, 31 mars-3 avril 1993, ed. A. Hasnawi, A. Elamrani-Jamal, and M. Aouad, Peeters, Leuven-Paris, 1997, pp. 105-122; Saliba, "The Ultimate Challenge to Greek Astronomy: Ḥall mā lā Yanḥall of Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī (d. 1550)", in Sic Itur Ad Astra: Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, Festschrift für den Arabisten Paul Kunitzsch zum 70. Geburstag, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000, pp. 490-505.

61

Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 7, 1973, pp. 212-219.

62

See al-Jāmi' li-Mufradāt al-Adwiya wa-l-Aghdhiya, Bulaq, 1874.

63

Although this physician's work is still relatively understudied, much can now be gathered from the article devoted to him in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 9, 1974, pp. 602-606.

64

O. Neugebauer, "Studies in Byzantine Astronomical Terminology", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, 50 (1960): 1-45.

65

David Pingree, The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades, Amsterdam, 1985; Pingree, "Gregory Chioniades and Paleologan Astronomy", Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18 (1964): 133-160.

66

A. Tihon, "L'astronomie byzantine (du V^e au XV^e siècle)", Byzantion 51 (1981): 603-624, and her other articles now gathered in A. Tihon, Études d'astronomie byzantine, London, 1994.

67

Maria Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources, Leiden, 2002.

68

Because of the prohibitive costs of publishing the inordinate amount of illustrations which I needed for that article I decided to publish it on the World Wide Web at http://www.columbia.edu, where I also provided links to some of the manuscripts that were annotated by Postel and others.

69

Paris, 1893.

70

Ibid., p. 338.

71

Ibid.

72

Paris, 1899.

73

Ibid., p. 32 tr, 36 syr.

74

Ibid., p. 42 tr. 47 syr.

75

Ed. A. Sabra and N. Shehaby, Cairo, 1971.

76

See Dictionary of Scientific Biography, s.v. Ibn al-Nafīs.

77

Ed. Mehdi Mohaghegh, Tehran, 1993.

78

See Al-Fihrist.

79

Ibid., pp. 391-398.

80

The little we know about the author of al-Nahmaṭān can be found in Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, vol. VII, p. 114, although there the book is called al-Yahbuṭān.

81

Al-Fihrist, pp. 391-393.

82

This mythological king of Persia seems to have been at the origin of all legends of Persian civilization, somehow playing a role similar to that of Hermes. His name was usually associated with first kingship, first writing, first building, etc. His father's name is spelled in a variety of ways: Earlier in the Fihrist, and with the same spelling, he was associated with the Persian language, Fihrist, p. 23. Ṭabari, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, Beirut, 1987, vol. 1, p. 109, and Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh, Beirut, 1995, vol. 1, p. 52, spell the name as Uyunjihān (wywnjhn). Yāqūt, Mu'jam al-buldān, Beirut, 1979, vol. 3, p. 170, s.v. sārūq, spells it as Nūjihān. All these variations underline the legendary nature of this report as will be argued later.

83

Teukreus, Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, vol. VII, p. 71f.

84

Fihrist, p. 393.

85

I am referring, for example, to the length of the Babylonian lunar month, 29, 31, 50, 8, 20 days, that was reported by Ptolemy in the Almagest IV, 2, as having been the value already adopted by Hipparchus before him. See also Asger Aaboe, "On the Babylonian Origin of Some Hipparchian Parameters," Centaurus 4 (1955-56): 122-125.

86

On Māshā'allāh, see Pingree and Kennedy, Astrological History of Māshā'allāh, Cambridge, 1971.

87

See supra, chap. 1, and Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a, 'Uyūn al-Anbā' fī Ṭabaqāt al-Aṭibbā, ed. Richard Müller, Königsberg, 1884, vol. 2. p. 134ff.

88

Pingree and Kennedy, Astrological History.

89

Fihrist, pp. 393-395. On Abū Mā'shar himself, and his writings, see the extensive entry for him in the Dictionary for Scientific Biography, New York, 1970, vol. 1, pp. 32-39.

90

Nishwār al-muḥāḍara wa akhbār al-mudhākara, ed. A. Shaljī, Beirut, 1971-1973, IV, p. 66, also quoted in G. Saliba, "The role of the astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society", Bulletin d'Études Orientates 44 (1992): 45-68, p. 53 n. 47, repr. in Magic and Divination in Early Islam, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith, Ashgate-Variorum, London, 2004, pp. 341-370.

91

For an echo of this story, see Bīrūnī, Chronology, p. 27f.

92

Fihrist, p. 395.

93

Ibid.

94

Chronology, p. 169.

95

For Abū Mā'shar's defense of astrology against the enemies of his day, see G. Saliba, "Islamic Astronomy in Context: Attacks on Astrology and the Rise of the Hay'a Tradition", Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, 2002, 4: 25-46.

96

Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Princeton, 1958, vol. 3, p. 263.

97

For an overview of such literature, see Kennedy, Survey, 1956, and more recently EI², s.v. zīdj, vol. XI, p. 496.

98

Fihrist, p. 395f.

99

For a more reliable account of this war and its aftermath see Peter Sarris, "The Eastern Roman Empire from Constantine to Heraclius (306-641)", in Cyril Mango, ed., The Oxford History of Byzantium, Oxford, 2002, pp. 19-59.

100

Fihrist, p. 396

101

See a similar report, in the work of another tenth-century author, al-Mas'ūdī (d. 957), Les Praries d'or, Paris, 1914, vol. II, p. 320f.

102

This "first humanism" has to be nuanced with the same nuance that was used by its foremost student Paul Lemerle, in Le premier Humanisme, when he says: "Quel sens peut avoire l'humanisme, quand tout est tendu vers un dépassement de l'humain? ... Les Grecs de Byzance... lisent peu, ils se contentent aisément de florilèges, de recueils de citations, de glossaries, de commentaries, de manuels; ils ne cherchent pas l'esprit, tout paraît se ramener à des procédés. Souvent leur erudition nous surpend: mais, à bien regarder, la literature antique est-elle pour eux autre chose qu'un vaste magasin d'accessoire, au service d'une "rhétorique" savant compliquée?" p. 306. See also the very pertinent discussion of the conditions in Byzantium at the time in Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought Arabic Culture, pp. 175-178.

103

For the various missions to acquire books from Byzantium and the conditions in which they were kept there see al-Nadīm's account below, and al-Qifṭī, Tārīkh al-ḥukamā', Leipzig, 1903, p. 29f; Youssef Eche, Les Bibliothèques Arabes, Damas, 1967, p. 28f. On Ma'mūn's mission to the king of Cyprus to acquire Greek books and the discussion regarding the effect of those books on the Christians and the desirability of sending them to al-Ma'mūn hoping to corrupt the Muslims with them, and the discussion regarding the nature of translation itself, see Ṣalah al-Dīn b. Aybak al-Ṣafadī (d. 1362), Al-Ghayth al-musajjam fī sharḥ lāmīyat al-'ajam, Beirut, 1997, p. 87f

104

Qiftf, Tā'rīkh, p. 29.

105

For a detailed bibliography on this Syriac author, see Albert Abuna, Adab al-Lugha al-Ārāmīya, Beirut, 1970, pp. 231-233.

106

Ibid., pp. 363-365.

107

Ibid., pp. 375-377.

108

Ed. Mingana, Heffer, Cambridge, 1935.

109

F. Nau, "Notes d'astronomie syrienne", JA, 2e ser. t. xvi, 1910, p. 225f.

110

Fihrist, p. 396f.

111

The text has zādā nfrwkh (Zādā Nifrūkh?), which most likely should be Zādān Farrūkh.

112

The text has sabiy, which must be sababī (my link = i.e. my cause of livelihood).

113

Fihrist, p. 397.

114

It is in that respect that Lemerle's term "appropriation", which was later used by Sabra, gains a special significance in its capacity to render the intent of this classical source of al-Nadīm.

115

See the brief account of this dream in the previous chapter, here quoted in greater detail on account of its importance to our present discussion.

116

Fihrist, p. 397.

117

Ibid., p. 397f.

118

Ibid., p. 398.

119

As Lemerle would say: "ils lisent peu, ils se contentent aisément de florilèges, de recueils de citations, de glossaries, de commentaries, de manuels;... ils ne cherchent pas." For them the classical texts of high science and philosophy had become "vaste magasin d'accessoire", as already noted again by Lemerle.

120

Most writers on the subject of the transmission of Greek science into Arabic refer to the stories about Khālid as legends. See for example, F. Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, Routledge, London, 1965, p. 3, where he says: "Therefore, we should do well to relegate the precise story of Khalid's alchemical translation activity to the realm of legend." See also Manfred Ullman, Die Medizin im Islam, Leiden, Brill, 1970, where he says: "Dass der Umaiyadenprinz Hālid b. Yazīd (gest. 85/704) dafür gesorgt habe, dass alchemitische und medizinische Bücher ins Arabische übersetzt wurden, gehört wiederum der wissenschaftlichen Legende an", p. 22.

121

Abū Hilāl al-'Askarī, Kitāb al-awā'il, Beirut, 1997, p. 185f.

122

Rosenthal, Classical Heritage, p. 4f, where he also sends the reader for further confirmation of this interpretation to the work of R. Paret, Der Islam und das griechische Bildungsgut, Tübingen, 1950.

123

Al-Jahshiyārī, Beirut, 1988, p. 29f.

124

Al-Jahshiyārī, Kitāb ai-Wuzarā', p. 29f.

125

Khwārizmī says that he composed his book on Algebra in order to answer to the need of men who "constantly require in cases of inheritance, legacies, partition, lawsuits, and trade, and in all their dealings with one another, or where the measuring of lands, the digging of canals, geometrical computations, and other objects of various sorts and kinds are concerned..." The Algebra of Muḥammad ben Mūsā, tr. Frederic Rosen, London, 1831, p. 3.

126

See Rashed, "l'Idée de l'Algèbre."

127

Ibn Qutayba, Adab al-kātib, ed. Muḥammad al-Dālī, Beirut, second ed. 1996, p. 12f.

128

Ibn Qutayba, Kitāb al-anwā', Hyderabad, 1956.

129

Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjānī, Mā yaḥtāj ilaih al-Ṣunnā' min 'ilm al-handasa, Baghdad, 1979; Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjānī, Mā yaḥtāj ilaih al-kuttāb wa-l-'ummāl wa-ghairihim min 'ilm al-ḥisāb, in A. S. Saidan, Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjānī: 'ilm al-ḥisāb al-'arabī, Amman, 1971.

130

Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Yūsuf al-Khwārizmī al-Kātib, Mafātīḥ al-'ulūm, ed. G. van Vloten, Leiden, 1895.

131

Ibn Mamātī, Qawānīn al-Dawāwīn, ed. Aziz Atiya, Cairo, 1943.

132

Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. al-Ukhuwwa, Ma'ālim ..., ed. Reubin Levey, Cambridge, 1938.

133

Jahshiyārī, p. 30.

134

Ibid.

135

Ibid.

136

Ibn Qutayba, 'Uyūn al-akhbār, Beirut, 1997, p. 48, Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima, vol. 2, pp. 102, 352.

137

In the case of Sergius, see G. Saliba, "Paulus Alexandrinus in Syriac and Arabic", Byzantion 65 (1995): 440-454, esp. p. 443 where Sergius says: "The exact position of the sun, however, is known from the second book of the Tables, and the computations of Claudius Ptolemaeus. But if one would like to know, in simple fashion, where the sun is to be found, he computes thus: "As for Severus Sebokht, and while arguing in a text now preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Syr. 346) fol. 59v et seq.) that the phenomenon of eclipses was not due to some metaphysical being called Atalia, but that it was a natural phenomenon that could be calculated and predicted, he speaks thus: "Les calculs á l'aide desquels on trouve exactement ces noeuds (ascendant et descendant) avec leurs causes, sont dans le livre qui est nommé Régle (canon) des calculs, fait par l'astronome Ptolémée sur la course et le mouvement de tous les astres. Bien que de nombreux hommes l'aient précédé et l'aient suivi, il a brillé à lui seul, dans l'art de l'astronomie, plus que tous les anciens et les modernes (ensemble). C'est d'après sa pensée que nous venons de placer les causes exactes et véritables des éclipses, et car nous avons pu puiser une petite goutte de la grande mer de sublime science qui est dans ses écrits, pour adresser un rappel, c'est-à-dire un stimulant, aux amis du travail (φιλοπονοι) pour qu'ils s'appliquent encore et ne se relâchent pas de l'amour de la sagesse (φιλοσοφια) bien que les adversaires ouvrent fortement la bouche et aiguisent la lange (contre eux)." translated by F. Nau, in Revue de l'Orient Chretien, 3e serie 7, no. xxvii (1929-30 : 327-338, esp. p. 330.

138

G. Saliba, "Competition and the Transmission of the Foreign Sciences: Ḥunayn at the Abbāsid Court", Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 2 (2000): 85-101.

139

Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a, p. 258.

140

Fihrist, p. 465.

141

Ibid., p. 465.

142

Bergstrasser.

143

Evidence of translations of non-scientific nature, as well as fresh compositions based on the same, can be also gleaned from such works as Mario Grignaschi, "Les "Rasā'il 'Arisṭāṭālīs 'ilā-l-Iskandar" de Salim Abū-l-'Alā et l'Activité Culturelle a l'Époque Omayyade", Bulletin d'Études Orientates 19 (1965-66): 7-83.

144

See chapter 1 above, and allow for the early incorporation of Sanskrit and Persian medical and pharmacological material that may have taken place before the time of al-Manṣūr. On the astronomical technical level, much of the material discussed in this chapter had already appeared in a preliminary fashion in EHAS, pp. 59-83, and more recently in Encyclopedia Italiana, Storia della Scienza, ed. Sandro Petruccioli, Roma, 2001, v. III, 2002, pp. 198-213.

145

See Gutas, pp. 30, 44 and passim.

146

Future research may change this consensus to allow for the evidence of earlier translations from the Hellenistic tradition as well. See, for example, Grignaschi, "Les "Rasā'il" on Hellenistic translations, and probably read as well the often used expression "old translation" (al-naql al-qadīm) of several Hellenistic scientific and philosophical sources, to refer to possible earlier translations again, that may have taken place during the 100 years stretching from the time of 'Abd al-Malik reforms ca. 705 A.D. and the early part of the ninth century. For the instances of al-naql al-qadīm, or bi-naql qadīm (in an old translation), see Fihrist, pp. 412, 431 and passim.

147

The last years of the Umayyads witnessed increased upheavals in the eastern provinces that were still governed from the army encampments of Iraq. Some of those upheavals took the form of open rebellion of major proportions. Although they were crowned by the successful takeover by the Abbāsids, their forerunners, such as the rebellions of al-Mukhtār and the Mawālī (EI², VI, p. 874f.), should not be underestimated. What they all had in common was that their leaders would rarely be non-Arabs as such, but usually discontented Arab chieftains who were successful in harnessing the widespread discontent of the mostly Persian soldiery in advancing their claims against the Umayyads. This discontent of the non-Arabs of the eastern provinces is not unconnected with the pinch that was beginning to be felt by those who then realized fully what it meant to be estranged from the dīwān revenues, as the dīwān jobs continued to move into the hands of those who laid their claims to power on their knowledge of Arabic which at times must have taken the form of racial designations, to yield later on to the Shu'ūbīya movement and sentiment.

148

Qifṭi, p. 35f. Here one should also remember the similar references to "old translations" (bi-naql qadīm) reported by al-Nadīm in his Fihrist 404-410, in connection with the Aristotelian corpus, which may have taken place just about the same time as Ibn al-Muqaffa''s translations if not earlier.

149

Fihrist, p. 437.

150

Qifṭi, pp. 171-177.

151

Bergstrasser, p. 11 and passim.

152

Fihrist, pp. 401-409.

153

al-Jāḥiẓ, 'Amr b. Baḥr (869), Kitāb al-Bukhalā', Beirut, n.d., vol. 2, p. 4f.

154

This long-neglected field has luckily drawn the attention of my friend and colleague, David King, who has already devoted several studies that will definitely contribute to its revival, the latest of which is the monumental work: David King, In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, vol. I: The Call of the Muezzin, Leiden 2004; vol. II, Instruments of Mass Calculations, Leiden, 2005. 'Ilm al-farā'iḍ still awaits a similar interest.

155

Al-Ḥajjāj's Arabic translation of the Almagest survives in several copies, among them the fragment in British Library manuscript, Add. 7474, fol. 75r (as marked although the folios of this manuscript are woefully out of order), where the "correct" lunar value is cited. This parameter is further discussed in a recent article by Bernard Goldstein, "Ancient and Medieval Values for the Mean Synodic Month", Journal for the History of Astronomy 34 (2003): 65-74.

156

Asger Aaboe, "On the Babylonian Origin of Some Hipparchian Parameters", Centaurus 4 (1955-56): 122-125.

157

The idea that the passage of time could help refine observational values was already known to Ptolemy, Almagest [I,1], Toomer, p. 37.

158

See Kennedy, Survey, p. 146 and passim.

159

al-Farghānī, Ibn Kathīr, Jawāmi' 'ilm al-nujūm, Amsterdam, 1669, Arabic text, p. 49-50, 53, 58, 60, 74.

160

A value that was widely used in Islamic sources, as we have already mentioned in chapter 1, as well as the value, 23;30°, and at times 23;35°. See Kennedy, Survey, p. 145 and passim.

161

Here too, Farghānī, Jawāmi', p. 49, adopts the concept of the moving solar apogee, in agreement with the "moderns" and in opposition to Ptolemy.

162

This zīj has not yet been properly studied, and is only excerpted by Kennedy, in Survey, pp. 145-147, and the surviving manuscript reports a solar maximum equation of 1;59, clearly at odds with the Ptolemaic value of 2;23, al-Zīj al-Ma'mūnī al-Mumtaḥan, Escorial, Arabic Ms., 927, fol. 13r.

163

Qifṭi, pp. 351-354.

164

DSB, vol. 7 (1973), pp. 352-354, s.v. Khujandī.

165

Debarnot, EHAS, 503-4.

166

Saliba, "The Determination of the Solar Eccentricity and Apogee According to Mu'ayyad al-Dīn al-'Urḍī (d. 1266 A.D.)", Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 2 (1985): 47-67, reprinted in Saliba, A History, pp. 187-207.

167

Almagest [V, 14],

168

Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn, Taḥrīr al-majisṭī, India Office, Loth, 741, fols. 27v-28r.

169

Saliba, A History, p. 233f.

170

lbn al-Shāṭir, Kitāb nihāyat al-sūl fī taṣḥīḥ al-uṣūl, Bodleian, Ms. Marsh 139, fol. 3r.

171

Titles of such works are still preserved in the Fihrist, p. 141.

172

al-Ṣūfī, 'Abd al-Raḥmān (d. 986), Ṣuwar al-Kawākib, Hyderabad, 1953.

173

Laurel Brown of Columbia University is preparing a Ph.D. dissertation that will include a detailed analysis of this text and its implication for the Arabic critical tradition that was beginning to take shape during the tenth century.

174

See, for example, Ṣūfī, Ṣuwar, pp. 78, 218 and passim.

175

It is not surprising therefore to find that most Western major libraries include several copies of Ṣūfī's text among their holdings. See for example the various copies at the British Library, Or 5323, Or 1407, IOISL 621, IOISL 2389, and Add 7488, among others.

176

Almagest I,13, and HAMA, 26ff.

177

George Saliba, "The Role of the Almagest Commentaries in Medieval Arabic Astronomy: A Preliminary Survey of Ṭūsī's Redaction of Ptolemy's Almagest", Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences 37 (1987): 3-20, reprinted in Saliba, A History, pp. 143-160.

178

Debarnot, "The Zīj", and Morelon, Régis, "Eastern Arabic Astronomy between the Eighth and the Eleventh Centuries", EHAS, esp. pp. 31-34.

179

We have already seen the similar process that took place in the field of mathematics, where we found the translator Qusṭā b. Lūqā himself deploying the algebraic technical terminology of his time within the translation of the Arithmetica of Diophantus which had no such expressions in Greek. See Rashed, l'Art de l'Algèbre de Diaphont.

180

Saliba, A History, p. 208f.

181

In Aristotle's words in On the Heavens I & II, ed. Stuart Leggatt, Aris & Phillips, Warminster, 1995, II, 3 [286a 12-20]: "Why, then, is not the entire body of the world like this? Because some part of the body that moves in a circle must remain at rest — that part at the center — but no part of this body is able to remain at rest, either in general or at the center. For its natural movement would then in fact be towards the center, but it moves by nature in a circle; its movement would not be everlasting, since nothing counter-natural is everlasting. Now, the counter-natural is posterior to the natural, and the counter-natural is a displacement of the natural in the process of becoming. Hence, there must be Earth, since this rests at the center. For the moment, then, let this be assumed; later this will be proved of it." And on II, 14, [296b 21-24] he says: "It is evident, therefore, that the Earth must be at the center and motionless, both for the reasons given, and because weights thrown straight upward by force return to the same point, even if the force flings them an unlimited distance."

182

See the most recent summation of those problems in George Saliba, "Greek Astronomy and the Medieval Arabic Tradition", American Scientist, July-August 2002: 360-367.

183

Saliba, "Early Arabic Critique",

184

Saliba, A History, p. 20f; Saliba, "Critiques of Ptolemaic Astronomy in Islamic Spain", al-Qanṭara 22 (1999): 3-25.

185

Saliba, A History, p. 85f.

186

Quoted in ibid., p. 279.

187

Ibn al-Haitham (d. 1049), al-Shukūk 'alā Baṭlamyūs (Dubitationes in Ptolemaeum), ed. A. Sabra and N. Shehaby, Cairo, 1971.

188

See the literature reviewed in F. Jamil Ragep, "Duhem, the Arabs, and the history of Cosmology", Synthese 83 (1990): 210-214, and Ragep, Naṣīr, p. 47 nn. 5 and 6 and passim.

189

Ibn al-Haitham, Shukūk, p. 5.

190

Ibid., p. 5.

191

Ibid., p. 16.

192

Ibid., p. 16.

193

Toomer, Ptolemy's Almagest, p. 443.

194

Ibn al-Haitham, Shukūk, p. 26.

195

See Swerdlow, "Jābir Ibn Aflaḥ's Interesting Method for Finding the Eccentricities and Direction of the Apsidal Line of a Superior Planet", in From Deferent to Equant, ed. D. King and G. Saliba, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 500 (1987): 501-512.

196

Ibn al-Haitham, Shukūk, p. 33f.

197

Ibid., p. 36.

198

Ibid., p. 38.

199

Ibid. In similar wordings this admission was in fact made by Ptolemy in Almagest, IX, 2 (Toomer's translation, p. 422) where he said: "we may [be allowed to] accede [to this compulsion], since we know that this kind of inexact procedure will not affect the end desired, provided that it is not going to result in any noticeable error."

200

Ibn al-Haitham, Shukūk, p. 38f.

201

Ibid., p. 41f.

202

Ibid., p. 44.

203

Ibid., p. 46.

204

Ibid., p. 47.

205

Ibid., p. 59.

206

Ibid., p. 60.

207

Ibid., p. 57.

208

'Urḍī, Hay'a, p. 212.

209

Ibn al-Haitham, Shukūk, p. 54.

210

Ibid., p. 62.

211

'Urḍī, introduction p. 39, text, p. 218.

212

Ibn al-Haitham, Shukūk, p. 63f.

213

Quoted in Saliba, A History, p. 151.

214

Saliba, A History, p. 151.

215

Almagest, XIII, 2, Toomer, p. 600.

216

Quoted in Saliba, A History, p. 153.

217

Al-Akhawayn, fols. 4v-5r.

218

See Saliba, "al-Qushjī's reform", pp. 161-203.

219

Signaled in Saliba, A History (p. 283f).

220

Quoted in Saliba, A History (p. 284f.).

221

Quoted in ibid. (p. 285).

222

Saliba, A History, p. 285.

223

Ibid., p. 286.

224

See Saliba, "A Sixteenth-Century Arabic Critique"; Saliba, "A Redeployment"; Saliba, "The Ultimate Challenge."

225

Quoted in Saliba, A History (p. 287f.).

226

G. Saliba, "Copernican Astronomy in the Arab East: Theories of the Earth's Motion in the Nineteenth Century", in Transfer of Modem Science and Technology to the Muslim World, ed. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Istanbul, 1992, pp. 145-155.

227

Saliba, The Astronomical Work of Mu'ayyad al-Dīn al-'Urḍī.

228

'Urḍī, p. 249f.

229

Ibid., p. 250f.

230

See the similar texts in the translation of Leggatt quoted before and add to it, Aristotle, On the Heavens, Loeb, 1939, repr. 1960, II, xiii, and seq.

231

See, for example, Bernard Goldstein, AI-Bitrūjī: On the Principles of Astronomy, 2 vols., New Haven, 1971.

232

See Saliba, "Redeployment".

233

The account of 'Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī is taken from his book al-Ifāda wa-l-I'tibār, ed. Aḥmad Ghassān Sabānū, Dār Ibn Zaydūn (Beirut) and Dār Qutayba (Damascus), 1984, p. 103f.

234

In his own words 'Abd al-Laṭīf puts it thus: "(In any case) observation (al-ḥiss literally feeling) is more valid than hearing (sam', i.e. learning from books being recited). Observation is even more valid than Galen, despite his rank among the scientists in investigation and his meticulousness in all that he said or practiced, observation is still more true than him (al-ḥiss aṣdaq minh).

235

See Saliba, "Islamic Astronomy in Context."

236

'Urḍī, p. 214f. and passim.

237

Ibn al-Haitham, Shukūk, p. 33f.

238

See, for example, Louis Cheikho, "Risālat al-Khujandī fī mayl wa-'arḍ al-balad", Mashriq 11 (1908): 60-69; A. Jourdain, Mémoire sur l'observatoire de Méragah et sur Quelques Instruments Employés pour Observer, Paris, 1870; E. Wiedeman with T. Juynbol, "Avicennas Schrift über ein von ihm ersonnenes Beobachtunginstrument", Acta Orientali XI, 5 (1926): 81-167; Aydın Sayılı, Ghiyâth al-Dîn al-Kâshî's letter on Ulugh Bey and the Scientific Activity in Samarqand, Ankara, 1985.

239

For brief statements of such problems, see Saliba, "Greek Astronomy" and "Arabic Planetary Theories."

240

Abū al-Raiḥān, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī (1048), Kitāb al-tafhīm li-awā'il ṣinā'at al-tanjīm (The Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology), London, 1934. For a more complete text with a Persian translation, see Jalāl al-Dīn Homā'ī, al-Tafhīm Ii-awā'il ṣinā'at al-tanjīm, Teheran, 1362 = 1984.

241

Abū Ma'shar al-Balkhī (d. 886), al-Madkhal ilā 'ilm aḥkām al-nujūm, Jārullah (Carullah) Ms., 1058, published in facsimile, Frankfurt, 1985.

242

In fact there is much evidence that Aristotelian cosmology was not all that secure in the Islamic domain, as F. Jamil Ragep recently demonstrated in "Ṭūsī and Copernicus: The Earth's Motion in Context" (Science in Context 14, 200): 145-163) and "Freeing Astronomy from Philosophy: An Aspect of Islamic Influence on Science" (Osiris 16, 2001: 49-71).

243

For a more detailed description of the alternatives that were developed during medieval Islamic times, see G. Saliba, "Arabic Planetary Theories after the Eleventh Century", in EHAS, pp. 58-127, and more recently in G. Saliba, "Alternative all'astronomia tolemaica", in Storia della Scienza, ed. Sandro Petruccioli, Roma, 10v, 2001, v. III, 2002, pp. 214-236.

244

Toomer, Ptolemy's Almagest, p. 144, note 32, and Neugebauer, HAMA, p. 149g.

245

Obviously resulting from the motions of spheres in place. Emphasis added.

246

Toomer, Ptolemy's Almagest, p. 140.

247

Ibid., p. 141.

248

Ibid., p. 153.

249

Ibid., p. 145.

250

See the objections of Jābir Ibn Aflāḥ against this particular point in the Ptolemaic model, and his proposed solution for it, in Swerdlow, "Jābir Ibn Aflāḥ's Interesting Method", supra.

251

In addition to the objections raised by Ibn al-Haitham and others in the Arabic astronomical tradition note the following statement of Copernicus in his earliest astronomical work, the Commentariolus, which speaks directly to the absurdity of such a proposal, called by Copernicus "not sufficiently in accordance with reason": "Nevertheless, the theories concerning these matters that have been put forth far and wide by Ptolemy and most others, although they correspond numerically [with the apparent motions], also seemed quite doubtful, for these theories were inadequate unless they also envisioned certain equant circles, on account of which it appeared that the planet never moves with uniform velocity either in its deferent sphere or with respect to its proper center. Therefore, a theory of this kind seemed neither perfect enough nor sufficiently in accordance with reason." Noel Swerdlow, "The Derivation and First Draft of Copernicus's Planetary Theory: A Translation of the Commentariolus with Commentary", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 6 (1973), p. 434.

252

See the seminal paper of Victor Roberts, "The Solar and Lunar Theory of Ibn al-Shāṭir: A Pre-Copernican Copernican Model", Isis 48 (1957): 428-432, reprinted in E. S. Kennedy et al., Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, American University of Beirut, 1983, pp. 50-54.

253

The same chagrin was expressed centuries later by Copernicus in his Commentariolus: "But of all things in the heavens the most remarkable is the motion of Mercury which passes through nearly untraceable points so that it cannot easily be investigated." Swerdlow, Commentariolus, p. 499.

254

Quoted in Saliba, A History, p. 153.

255

In Ptolemy's own words (Almagest, XIII, 2): "Now let no one, considering the complicated nature of our devices, judge such hypotheses to be over-elaborated. For it is not appropriate to compare human [constructions] with divine..." Toomer, Ptolemy's Almagest, p. 600.

256

Averroes, Tafsīr mā ba'd al-ṭabī'a, ed. Maurice Bouyges, Beirut, 1948, p. 1664. This comes from Averroes commentary on Book Lambda of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

257

For a full survey of these attempts to create new planetary theories see Saliba, "Planetary Theories" and Saliba "Alternative", already referred to above.

258

For a full original statement of this theorem see G. Saliba, "The Original Source", reprinted in Saliba A History, pp. 119-134. Also see 'Urḍī, Kitāb al-Hay'a for the full context of 'Urḍī's works.

259

In his discussion of the latitudinal motion of the planets, Copernicus makes the following remark: "If indeed this motion of libration takes place in a straight line, it is still possible that such a motion be composed from two spheres." Swerdlow, Commentariolus, p. 483. In his commentary on this passage, Swerdlow states: "In order to account for the libration of the orbital planes, Copernicus takes up one of the two devices for the generation of a rectilinear motion from two circular motions originally used, and indeed invented, by Naṣīr al-Dīn aṭ-Ṭūsī, and used extensively by Ibn ash-Shāṭir and other of the Marāgha astronomers." Commentariolus, p. 488.

260

Describing the connection between the oscillating epicyclic center of Mercury and the oscillating motion of the latitude plane of the planets we described above, Copernicus says: "For by this composite motion, the center of the larger epicycle is carried on a straight line, just as we have explained concerning latitudes that are librated", Swerdlow, Commentariolus, p. 503.

261

Now see Robert Morrison for the latest edition and translation of Shīrāzī's chapter dealing with the uṣūl, in "Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī's Use of Hypotheses", Journal for the History of Arabic Science 13 (2005): 21-140.

262

This legend was elegantly stated and rebutted by Otto Neugebauer in 1968 ("On the Planetary Theory of Copernicus", Vistas in Astronomy 10: 89-103).

263

See G. Saliba, "Theory and Observation in Islamic Astronomy: The work of Ibn al-Shāṭir of Damascus", Journal for the History of Astronomy 18 (1987): 35-43, reprinted in Saliba, A History, pp. 233-241.

264

Saliba, "A Redeployment of Mathematics."

265

For a more detailed alternative discussion of the philosophical dimension of Islamic astronomy, see G. Saliba, "Aristotelian Cosmology and Arabic Astronomy", in De Zénon d'ÉIée a Poincaré, ed. Régis Morelon and Ahmad Hasnawi, Louvain, 2004, pp. 251-268.

266

One such treatise was published by Anton Heinen, Islamic Cosmology, Beirut, 1982.

267

After all it was even Ptolemy himself who had stated in the introduction of the Almagest that "this science [meaning astronomy], alone above all things, could make men see clearly; from the constancy, order, symmetry and calm which are associated with the divine, it makes its followers lovers of this divine beauty, accustoming them and reforming their natures, as it were, to a similar spiritual state." Toomer, Almagest, p. 37. This sentiment is echoed by 'Urḍī, around a millennium later, in his Kitāb al-Hay'a, where he says of astronomy: "Its subject-matter is the most amazing of God's achievements, the most magnificent of His creations, and the best executed of His deeds. As for its demonstrations, they are geometrical and arithmetical and therefore definitive. The benefit of this science is immense for the one who contemplates the celestial marvels and the heavenly motions. For through that the mind has an abundant domain and an indisputable proof of the existence of God the most exalted. It leads to theology and demonstrates the magnificence of the Creator, the wisdom of the Maker, and the immensity of His power. May God, the best of creators, be blessed." Saliba, 'Urḍī, Hay'a, p. 27f.

268

The following account is taken from Saliba, "Early Arabic Critique."

269

See Arabic Ms. 520RH, Osmania University Library, Hyderabad.

270

Ibid.

271

Averroes, Tafsīr, p. 1661.

272

Ibid., p. 1661.

273

Ibid., p. 1664.

274

See Saliba, "Aristotelian Cosmology", p. 260f.

275

'Urḍī, p. 212.

276

Ibid., p. 218.

277

Ghars al-Dīn, Aḥmad b. Khalīl al-Ḥalabī (d. 1563), Tanbīh al-nuqqād 'alā mā fī al-hay'a al-mashhūra min al-fasād (Alerting the Critics to the Corruption of the Well-Known Astronomy), Istanbul, Yenicami, Ms. 1181, fol. 148r.

278

Al-Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, tr. Michael Marmura, Provo, 1997, pp. 174-176 and passim.

279

See Saliba, "Role of the Almagest commentaries", reprinted in Saliba, A History, p. 153.

280

The repercussion of this theorem in terms of categories of motion is treated in greater detail in Saliba, "Aristotelian Cosmology", p. 263f.

281

See G. Saliba and E. S. Kennedy, "The Spherical Case of the Ṭūsī Couple", Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 1 (1991): 285-291, reprinted with minor mistakes in Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī: Philosophe et savant du XIII^e siècle, ed. N. Pourjavadi and Z. Vesel, Institut Français de Recherche en Iran and Presses Universitaires d'Iran, Teheran, 2000, pp. 105-111.

282

Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, al-Tuḥfa al-Shāhīya, Paris, BN Arabe, 2516, fol. 28r.

283

Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Kitāb al-Mu'tabar, Hyderabad, 1938, volume 1, chapter 24, pp. 94-103.

284

See Galileo's text as cited in Edward Grant, ed., A Source Book in Medieval Science, 1974, p. 290.

285

On the continuity of this "nibbling" at the edges of the Aristotelian universe in the writings of the Islamic astronomers and philosophers, see Ragep, "Ṭūsī and Copernicus" and "Freeing Astronomy."

286

For a brief description of the development of the various solutions of the qibla problem, see David King, in EI², s.v. "Kibla: Sacred direction", reprinted in David King, Astronomy in the Service of Islam, Aldershot, 1993, section IX.

287

Reviewing the general developments of the exact sciences, E. S. Kennedy had this to say about the discipline of trigonometry: "This subject, the study of the plane and spherical triangle, was essentially a creation of Arabic-writing scientists, and it is the only branch of mathematics of which this statement can be said." E. S. Kennedy, "The Arabic Heritage in the Exact Sciences", al-Abḥāth 23 (1970): 327-344.

288

For a short survey of the discipline and the use of trigonometric functions, see D. King, EI², s.v. "Mīqāt: astronomical Timekeeping", reprinted in D. King, Astronomy in the Service of Islam and in King, In Synchrony with the Heavens.

289

A frequently repeated tradition from the prophet, as quoted by Shāfi'ī, says: "al-'ilm 'ilmān: 'ilm al-adyān wa-'ilm al-abdān, ya'nī al-fiqh wa-l-ṭib" (science is of two kinds: a science of religion, and a science of bodies, meaning jurisprudence and medicine). See Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Aybak al-Ṣafadī (d. 1363), Kitāb al-wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, Wiesbaden, 1981, vol. 2, p. 174.

290

EI², III, 896.

291

See Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy, p. 45f. n. 51; G. Saliba, "Persian Scientists in the Islamic World: Astronomy from Maragha to Samarqand", in The Persian Presence in the Islamic World, ed. R. Hovannisian and G. Sabagh, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 126-146.

292

For a short biography see EI², X, p. 746, s.v. "al-Ṭūsī".

293

English translation: Contemplation and Action: The Spiritual Autobiography of a Muslim Scholar, London, 1998.

294

al-Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn, The Rawḍatu't-Taslīm : Commonly called Taṣawwurāt, Persian text, ed. W. Ivanow, Leiden, 1950.

295

al-Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn, Awṣāf al-ashrāf, Beirut, 2001.

296

Ṭūsī, Tajrīd al-'i'tiqād, Cairo, 1996.

297

EI², V, p. 547

298

See G. Saliba, "Reform of Ptolemaic Astronomy at the Court of Ulugh Beg", Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honor of David Pingree, eds. Charles Burnett, Jan Hogendijk, Kim Plofker and Michio Yano, Boston, 2004, pp. 810-824.

299

The Egyptian edition (1962-1970) has 30 volumes in 10.

300

See David King, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, s.v. "Ibn al-Shāṭir", and Kennedy and Ghānim, Ibn al-Shāṭir.

301

See George Saliba, "Reform", and Tashküprüzadeh (d. 1561), al-Shaqā'q al-nu'mānīya fi 'ulamā' al-dawla al-'uthmānīya, Istanbul, 1985, p. 107f. For his works on 'ibādāt, see Saliba, A History, p. 47, n. 56.

302

See Saliba, "A Sixteenth-Century Critique."

303

Saliba, "A Sixteenth-Century Critique", p. 16f.

304

See Saliba, "The Role of the Astrologer."

305

See David Pingree, "Gregory Chioniades" and The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades. See also E. A. Paschos and P. Sotiroudis, The Schemata of the Stars: Byzantine Astronomy from AD 1300, World Scientific, 1998.

306

See O. Neugebauer, "Studies in Byzantine Astronomical Terminology"; G. Saliba, "Arabic Astronomy in Byzantium", Journal for the History of Astronomy 20 (1990): 211-215.

307

See G. Saliba, Rethinking the Roots of Modern Science: Arabic Manuscripts in European Libraries, Washington DC, 1999.

308

See Saliba, "Whose Science."

309

Victor Roberts, "The Solar and Lunar Theory of Ibn al-Shāṭir: A pre-Copernican Copernican Model", Isis 48 (1957): 428-432.

310

A glimpse of the status of Arabic in some European quarters, especially among the humanists, can be gained from the advise given by Hernan Nuñez, a professor at the University of Salamanca, a most friendly place for Arabic studies to Copernicus's contemporary, Nicolas Clenardus of Louvain (1495-1542), who had traveled, around 1530-1532, all the way from Louvain to Salamanca, in search of an Arabic professor, only to be told by Nuñez: "What concern have you with this barbarous language, Arabic? It is quite sufficient to know Latin and Greek. In my youth I was as foolish as you, and, not content with adding Hebrew to the other two languages, I also took up Arabic; but I have long given up these last two, and devoted myself entirely to Greek. Let me advise you to do the same." (quoted in Karl Dannenfeldt, "The Renaissance Humanists and the Knowledge of Arabic", Studies in the Renaissance 2 (1955): 96-117) The enmity towards things Arabic and Islamic is signaled in Dannenfeldt's conclusion of the same article where he says: "However, the religious uses of Arabic to elucidate the Hebrew words in Christian religious literature and documents and to facilitate the pacific crusade against Islam seem to have predominated in the views of most of those who studied this oriental language. In this last area, the Renaissance humanists continued an earlier medieval theme." Ibid. p. 117. See also Giovanna Cifoletti, "The Creation of the History of Algebra in the Sixteenth Century", in Mathematical Europe, ed. Catherine Goldstein et al., Paris, 1996, pp. 123-142, esp. 123.

311

See De Vaux, "Les spheres."

312

Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus: Faksimiles des Manuskriptes, Hildesheim, 1974, p. 75r.

313

In response to Ragep's assessment in Ragep, Naṣīr, p. 429, where he claims that Ṭūsī, did not state explicitly that he invented the new theorem, one should remember that when Ṭūsī first stated the theorem in rudimentary form, in the Taḥrīr, he preceded it by his famous objection to Ptolemy's treatment of the subject starting with "aqūl" (I say), obviously implying that all the section that followed, including the rudimentary form of the theorem, until the resumption of his treatment of the Ptolemaic text, were all the work of Ṭūsī.

314

For a treatment of this problem and the vague reference by Copernicus to "some people" before him who had used the theorem, and the connection to the statement by Proclus, see Ragep's longer discussion, together with several references, of this particular point (Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's Memoir on Astronomy, pp. 430-432). Ragep's conclusion is further strengthened when read together with Swerdlow's "Copernicus's Four Models of Mercury", in Studia Copernicana XIII, ed. Owen Gingerich and Jerzy Dobrzycki, Warsaw, 1975.

315

Willy Hartner, "Copernicus, the Man, the Work, and Its History", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 6 (1973): 413-422.

316

See G. Saliba, "Re-visiting the Astronomical Contacts between the World of Islam and Renaissance Europe: The Byzantine Connection" (forthcoming).

317

See Jourdain, Mémoire.

318

On the motivation of the Ilkhānids to construct such an institution, see G. Saliba, "Horoscopes and Planetary Theory: Ilkhanid Patronage of Astronomers", lecture delivered at a colloquium organized by the Los Angeles County Museum, June 2003, and to appear in the proceedings of the colloquium.

319

Saliba, The Astronomical Work.

320

See figure 4.6 in chapter 4.

321

See Anthony Grafton, "Michael Maestlin's Account of Copernican Planetary Theory", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117, no. 6 (1973): 523-550.

322

Swerdlow, Commentariolus, p. 500.

323

Ibid., p. 504.

324

Ibid., p. 504.

325

Noel Swerdlow, "Astronomy in the Renaissance", in Astronomy before the Telescope, ed. Christopher Walker, St. Martin's Press, 1996, pp. 187-230, esp. 202.

326

Noel Swerdlow, and Otto Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus's De Revolutionibus, New York, 1984, p. 295.

327

See Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, Avicenne en Occident, Paris, 1993, esp. sections XII-XIV.

328

For the use of the Ṭūsī Couple by Giovanni Batista Amico in 1536, see Noel Swerdlow, "Aristotelian Planetary Theory in the Renaissance: Giovanni Batista Amico's Homocentric Spheres", Journal for the History of Astronomy 3 (1972): 36-48.

329

See the tantalizing hints by Willy Hartner in "Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's Lunar Theory", Physis 11 (1969): 289-304, and more recently, Ragep, Naṣīr, p. 432f., and G. Saliba, "Aristotelian Cosmology and Arabic Astronomy", in De Zénon d'Élée à Poincaré, ed. Régis Morelon and Aḥmad Hasnawi, Peeter, Louvain, 2004.

330

Paschos et al., The Schemata.

331

For the latest and most convincing attempt to explain the roots of Copernicus's heliocentrism, see Bernard Goldstein, "Copernicus and the Origin of His Heliocentric Universe", Journal for the History of Astronomy 33 (2002): 219-235, and the very relevant section in Noel Swerdlow, Commentariolus, pp. 474-478, and for the seriousness of the problems remaining, Swerdlow, "Astronomy in the Renaissance", pp. 200-202.

332

Such issues of "locality" versus "essence", as discussed by 'Abd al-Hamid Sabra, "Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence", Isis 87 (1996): 654-679, do not seem to have benefited from the implications of the evidence discussed here.

333

Swerdlow and Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy, p. 47.

334

See Giorgio Levi Della Vida, Ricerche sulla formazione del più antico fondo deu manoscritti orientali della biblioteca Vaticana, Studi e Testi, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Citta del Vaticano, 1939, p. 307 and passim. (This reference was brought to my attention by my friend and colleague Giorgio Vercellin of Venice. His help is gratefully acknowledged. On Postel himself there are few biographies: Georges Weill and François Secret, Vie et caractère de Guillaume Postel, Milan, 1987, and Marion Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Resittution of All Things, His Life and Thought, Hague, 1981. Much can also be gained from the proceedings of the 400 years commemoration of Postel simply published as: Guillaume Postel 1581-1981, Paris, 1985.

335

For a very detailed account of such men, see Dannenfeldt, "The Renaissance Humanists."

336

See the title page of Kharaqī's manuscript (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Arabe 2499).

337

For a brief description of the conditions that led to that treaty, and the privileges it granted to the French, both commercial and military, see V. H. H. Green, Renaissance and Reformation: A Survey of European History between 1450 and 1660, London 1954, repr. 1975, p. 363.

338

See for example the other Arabic manuscript at Leiden University Library, Or 2073, which was also signed by Postel as having been among his possessions. I owe this reference to my friend Dr. Maroun Aouad of the CNRS, Paris.

339

Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 2003, Francis I.

340

That is, "Mathematum Professoris Regii" as quoted by Maroun Aouad, from Leiden Ms. Or. 2073, in Averroès (Ibn Rušd): Commentaire Moyen à la Rhétorique d'Aristote, Édition critique du texte arabe et traduction française, 3 vols., Paris, 2002. See also Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, p. 29.

341

See, for example, Laurentiana Ms. Or 218, which contains interlinear translations of a commentary on the Conics, and dated 1581, mentioned in G. Saliba, Rethinking the Roots of Modern Science: Arabic Manuscripts in European Libraries, Washington DC, 1999, p. 21. The Bodleian Ms. Selden A. 11, which contains a book by 'Alī b. Sulaimān al-Hāshimī (ninth c.) called Kitāb fī'ilal al-zījāt, contains several marginal Latin annotations as well. See E. S. Kennedy, Fuad I. Haddad, and David Pingree, The Book of the Reasons behind Astronomical Tables, New York, 1981, pp. 41, 43, 48 and passim.

342

See, for example, the translation of the elementary treatise by Ibn al-Haitham "On the Elevation of the Pole", which was translated by Jacob Golios in 1643, still preserved at the British Museum Ms. Add. 3034, dated 1646, and the publication of Rāzī's treatise on the Smallpox, which was published in London in 1760, with Latin and Arabic on facing pages, See Rhazes de variolis et morbillis, London, 1760.

343

Other earlier contacts involving Regiomontanus (1476) have been tentatively put forward by F. Jamil Ragep in "'Alī Qushjī and Regiomontanus: Eccentric Transformations and Copernican Revolutions", Journal for the History of Astronomy 36 (2005): 359-371. For other contacts that were contemporary with Copernicus, see Paul Kunitzsch, Peter Apian und Azophi: Arabische Sternbilder in Ingolstadt im frühen 16. Jahrhundert, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, Jahrgang 1986, Heft 3, Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, München, 1986.

344

See for example similar contacts in the mathematical field as illustrated by Cifoletti, "Creation of the History of Algebra", and other works of Rashed on the subject.

345

Uffizi, Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe, U1454.

346

I have already devoted an article to this astrolabe. See G. Saliba, "A Sixteenth-Century Drawing of an Astrolabe Made by Khafīf Ghulām 'Alī b. 'Īsā (c. 850 A.D.)", Nuncius, Annali di Storia della Scienza 6 (1991): 109-119.

347

The relationship between those two astrolabists was already known to al-Nadīm, Fihrist, p. 451.

348

For examples of widespread influence of Islamic astrolabes on their European counterparts, see King, In Synchrony II, p. 41ff.

349

This astrolabe was once at the Time Museum, in Rockford Illinois, and has since been moved to a private collection. A picture of it was published in the catalogue of the Time Museum. See A. J. Turner, Catalogue of the Collection, The Time Museum, vol. I, Time Measuring Instruments, Part I, Astrolabes Astrolabe Related Instruments, Rockford, 1985, p. 65. See also King, In Synchrony II, p. 1010, 6.2.h.

350

David King, In Synchrony with the Heaven, vol. II, Instruments of Mass Calculations, Brill, Leiden, 2005

351

David King, In Synchrony II, p. 398f.

352

For samples of such designs see Yousif Muḥammad Ghulām, The Art of Arabic Calligraphy, published by the author, 1982, pp. 72, 100, 120-121 and passim.

353

I wish to express my gratitude for this information on the tulip craze and its Ottoman origins to my colleague and friend Professor Jeanne Nuechterlein.

354

In fact there are such monographs devoted to the subject. In particular see Angelo de Gubernatis, Matériaux pour servir a I'histoire des études orientales en Italie, Paris, 1876, and Fück, Johann, Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhundert, Leipzig, 1955, and more recently, John Robert Jones, Learning Arabic in Renaissance Europe (1505-1624), London University Dissertation, No. DX195516, 1988. Dannenfeldt's article "The Renaissance Humanists" remains very useful as well.

355

See Dictionary of Scientific Biography., s.v. "Leo Africanus", and EI², s.c. "Leo Africanus".

356

EI², s.v. "Leo Africanus."

357

For more information on this very interesting person, see the short discussion of his association with Copernican astronomy in Swerdlow and Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy, p. 16f., and the interesting articles by Peter Barker and Bernard Goldstein, "Patronage and Production of De Revolutionibus", Journal for the History of Astronomy 34 (2003), pp. 345-368, esp. 348, and by Bernard Goldstein, "Kepler and Hebrew Astronomical Tables", Journal for the History of Astronomy 32 (2001), 130-136. See also the very informative biographical note about him in Michaud's Biographie Universelle, 1847, vol. 44, which also puts him in contact with another very interesting orientalist by the name of Ambrosio Teseo (1469-1539) the slightly older contemporary of Copernicus who also knew Arabic and frequented northern Italy towards the turn of the sixteenth century, and S. Riezler, "Widmanstetter, Johann Albrecht", in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig, 1875-1912), vol. xlii, pp. 357-361. I wish to express my gratitude to Noel Swerdlow, who alerted me to Bernard Goldstein's articles regarding Widmanstadt in the Journal for the History of Astronomy and to Bernard Goldstein who supplied the exact references and quotations as well as the reference to Riezler.

358

Michaud, Louis Gabriel, Biographie Universelle, Paris, 1847, vol. 44, pp. 56, 570f.

359

For information about this patriarch, see Yūḥannā 'Azzô, "Risālat al-baṭriyark Ighnāṭyūs Ni'meh", al-Mashriq 31 (1933): 613-623, 730-737, 831-838.

360

Laurentiana, Ms. Or 177, fol. 79r.

361

For the exploits of this patriarch in Italy, see Robert Jones, Learning Arabic in Renaissance Europe, pp. 41-44.

362

The works of Robert Jones have been helpful in documenting the details about this press. See Robert Jones, Learning Arabic in Renaissance Europe and "The Medici Oriental Press (Rome 1584-1614) and the Impact of its Arabic Publications on Northern Europe", in The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. G. Russell, Leiden, 1994, pp. 88-108. For more on this press and on Ignatius Ni'matallāh's role, see G. J. Toomer, Eastern Wisdome and Learning, Oxford, 1996.

363

For this requirement, see Ursula Weisser, "Avicenna: Influence on Medical Studies in the West", in Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. III, pp. 107-110, esp. 109, col. 2.

364

On Copernicus's advise on the calendar, see Swerdlow and Neugebauer, p. 31.

365

On the extensive role of the Patriarch on that committee, see G. Coyne, M. Hoskin, and O. Pedersen, Gregorian Reform of the Calendar: Proceedings of the Vatican Conference to Commemorate its 400th anniversary (1582-1982), Vatican, 1983, pp. 137, 148, 215, 216, 217, 218, 221, 232, 235.

366

See Andreas Vesalius, On the Fabric of the Human Body, Book I, San Francisco, 1998, p. xlvii.

367

See Sachau, Chronology, p. x.

368

An example of the appeal of the conflict paradigm can be seen in the work of the distinguished physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science. As for Ghazālī's deleterious influence, Sachau's opinion is still quoted in almost all sources dealing with Islamic intellectual history.

369

See De Vaux, Les sphères célestes, and Nau, Livre de l'ascension de l'esprit.

370

From the modern period we see people like Huff, and even Sabra and King, almost always referring to the works of Ibn al-Shāṭir as the climax of astronomical thought, implying of course that they were the last flicker in a dying civilization, and that post Ibn al-Shāṭir period may not be worth the attention. See Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 47 n.1 and passim. Sabra, Appropriation, esp. pp. 238-242, where he has a section devoted to the issues of decline, and where he quotes David King on similar ideas.

371

A recent and well balanced assessment of this factor in the decline of Islamic science, discussed with other factors as well, has been elegantly summarized by Aḥmad Yūsuf al-Ḥassan, "Factors behind the Decline of Islamic Science after the Sixteenth Century", in Islam and the Challenge of Modernity, ed. Sharifah Shifa al-Attas, Kuala Lumpur, 1996, pp. 351-389, esp. 374-376.

372

As a result the names of Hulagu and his grandfather Gengis Khan are usually followed by the expression "May God curse him", as in Abū al-Fidā's, al-Mukhtaṣar fī Akhbār al-Bashar, Cairo, 1907, vol. 3, p. 122, vol. 4, p. 2. See also EI² for a good survey of the sources that describe the fall of Baghdad and its devastation.

373

See Hill, Book of Knowledge, and al-Ḥassan, al-Jām.

374

For the works of Banū Mūsā, see the English translation by Donald Hill, The Book of Ingenious Devices (Kitāb al-ḥiyal) by the Banū (sons of) Mūsā bin Shākir, Dordrecht, 1979, and the edition of the Arabic text by Aḥmad Yūsuf al-Ḥassan, Kitāb al-ḥiyal by the Banū (sons of) Mūsā bin Shākir, Aleppo, 1981.

375

See Carra de Vaux, "Le Livre des appareils pneumatiques et des machines hydroliques par Philon de Byzance", Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale 38 (1903): 27-237.

376

Hero of Alexandria, The Pneumatics of Hero of Alexandria, London, 1971.

377

See Saliba, "The Function of Mechanical Devices."

378

See al-Ḥassan, al-Jāmi', p. 5.

379

See Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a, 'Uyūn, vol. I, p. 207, where he reports about al-Kindī's affliction at the hands of Banū Mūsā as having been caused by al-Mutawakkil's fascination for the moving devices of Banū Mūsā (istihtār al-mutawakkil bi-l-ālāt al-mutaḥarrika).

380

Ibn al-Nafīs, Abū al-Ḥasan 'Alā al-Dīn b. Abī al-Ḥazm al-Qarshī al-Dimashqī (d. 1288), Kitāb Sharḥ Tashrīḥ al-Qānūn, ed. Silmān Qaṭṭāya, Cairo, 1988, p. 293-294.

381

See Dictionary of Scientific Biography, s.v. Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī.

382

John Hayes, ed., The Genius of Arab Civilization: Source of Renaissance, New York, 1975, p. 215.

383

Saliba, A History, p. 144.

384

Saliba, "The Ultimate challenge"

385

For a detailed account of this observatory and the stories surrounding its founding and its functioning, see Aydīn Sayīlī, The Observatory in Islam, Ankara, 1960, pp. 189-223, and Saliba, "Horoscopes and Planetary Theory"

386

For translations of this treatise, see Jourdain, Mémoire and Tekeli, "Al-Urdî'nin".

387

On the Marāgha, Samarqand, and Jai Singh II observatories, see Sayīlī, The Observatory in Islam, pp. 358-361; G. R. Kaye, Hindu Astronomy, Calcutta, 1924, p. 5; Kaye, Astronomical Observatories of Jai Singh, Calcutta, 1918. For the direct indebtedness of Jai Singh to the Marāgha observatory and the results obtained at that observatory, see Bose et al., Concise History, p. 101f.

388

For the field of scientific instruments in general, see the works of David King, Islamic Astronomical Instruments, London, 1987, and in particular section VII of that study on the universal astrolabe. More recently see his remarkable study of the Mecca-centered world map, in David King, World-Maps for Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca: Innovation and Tradition in Islamic Science, Leiden, 1999; King, In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, Leiden, 2004; François Charette, Mathematical Instrumentation in Fourteenth-Century Egypt and Syria: The Illustrated Treatise of Najm al-Dīn al-Miṣrī, Leiden, 2003, and now King's In Synchrony with the Heavens, vol. II, Instruments of Mass Calculation, Brill, 2005.

389

For a reference to this Italian lexicographer, see the Arabic copy of the Almagest, now kept at Tunis, Bibliothèque Nationale, no. 7116, which has a signed statement on the flyleaf, in the hand of Ibn Ma'rūf in which he quotes Calepino. A picture of that note is now published in G. Saliba, "The World of Islam and Renaissance Science and Technology", in Catherine Hess, ed. The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance, Los Angeles, 2004, pp. 55-73, esp. 71.

390

See, for example, Ms. 2994, preserved in Nurosmania Library, Istanbul.

391

The most recent application of this analysis can be seen in the work of Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science, who also quotes Needham and Weber on similar ideas.

392

I have already discussed these connections between the European academies and the discovery or the New World, as well as the connection of Galileo to all that activity in a relatively obscure journal in the context of a debate with the modern historian of science Toby Huff. See G. Saliba, "Flying Goats and Other Obsessions: A Response to Toby Huffs 'Reply'", Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 4, no. 2 (2002): 129-141, especially p. 135f. This debate is now available on World Wide Web.

393

Now see the study of David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends, and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History, Chicago, 2002.

394

For a fuller appreciation of this fact, and its implications for the rise of modern science, see Joseph Needham, Within the Four Seas: The Dialogue of East and West, Toronto, 1969.