Chapter 1: Introduction

Abstract

The text of SMA is preserved in a single manuscript in the British library (henceforth BL manuscript). It is the sixth work in a codex of eight scientific books. The focal subject of this codex is the astrolabe. The first group of texts (1–4) are copied in a single hand, Sephardic script. Texts 5–7, by Abraham Ibn Ezra, Alfonso, and Emanuel ben Ya‛aqov were copied in another Sephardic-Italian hand in the last third of the fifteenth century. Text 8 by Ya‛aqov ben Makhir is copied in a third hand. The corpus belonged to an erudite owner who wrote commentaries and added diagrams in the margins. Nurit Pasternak suggested and Malachi Beit-Arié confirmed that this owner was Mordekhai Finzi. Finzi was at the center of the mathematical and astronomical activity in the Mantua community, in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and had Jewish and Christian scientific colleagues. It seems that texts 5–7 were copied in Finzi’s milieu and perhaps were ordered by Finzi himself.