Abstract
In this article the author analyzes a fifteenth-century Arabic reform of the Ptolemaic model for Mercury. The author of the reform was the Central Asian – Ottoman astronomer ‘Alā” al-Dīn al-Qushjī (d. 1474 A.D.) who, in his youth, had been instructed in the mathematical sciences by none other than the famous Central Asian monarch Ulugh Beg (1394–1449). Although the astronomers of Ulugh Beg's circle are known to have produced extensive astronomical Persian tables, no one other than Qushjī has been yet identified to have produced a theoretical text devoted to the criticism, let alone the reform, of the Ptolemaic mathematical planetary models. The present article on Qushji's reform of the Ptolemaic model for Mercury includes a critical first edition of Qushji's Arabic text, an English translation, and a historical and technical commentary.
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