Abstract

Este artículo presenta el descubrimiento de un texto hasta ahora desconocido, llamado al-lstidrāk, obra de un astrónomo anónimo andalusí del siglo XI que conoció personalmente a Azarquiel y que planteó sus dudas acerca de la tradición astronómica griega. Sobre la base de este nuevo texto, el artículo pone en cuestión la idea que se ha venido manteniendo de que la tradición astronómica islámica fue sobre todo filosófica en al-Andalus y más matemática en Oriente. Se aducen además datos de ambos lados del Mediterráneo que demuestran que hubo una continuidad y unos contactos entre los dos extremos. El artículo mantiene que la falacia en esta caracterización de la astronomía islámica proviene de una falsa comparación entre las obras de filósofos occidentales con la de astrónomos orientales; cuando se comparan las obras astronómicas del Este y del Oeste queda claro que fueron los mismos problemas los que se plantearon en obras astronómicas en todo el orbe islámico. También se hace evidente que astrónomos orientales como Ibn al-Shāṭir de Damasco estaban sensibilizados a las mismas cuestiones filosóficas que preocupaban a los filósofos andalusíes y respondieron a estas cuestiones con sus propias respuestas filosóficas.

Highlights

  • There is an emerging consensus that the astronomy that preceded Copernicus had a lot to do with the kind of astronomy which was later proclaimed by him, and that the foundations of Copernican astronomy were already laid in major Muslim intellectual centers, with some particular significance to al-Andalus itself, but more importantly to the cities of the Muslim east

  • Modem historians of Arabic astronomy had already identified the key texts which were written in the eastern part of the Islamic world and in which a critical approach to Greek astronomy was clearly articulated. They date the maturity of this type of texts to the first half of the eleventh century when the famous astronomer, mathematician and physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Latin Alhazen) composed his famous work al-Shukuk 'aidBqtlamym (Doubts regarding Ptolemy).^ In that work, Ibn al-Haytham did take Ptolemy, the author of the Almagest, to task and condemned the astronomy proposed by him in no ambigous terms, because that astronomy seemd to Ibn al-Haytham to have harbored a contradiction between its physical and mathematical presuppositions

  • As we have just seen, the new astronomy must have laid a much greater emphasis on observations than on the received word of the masters. Such an attitude is usually associated with the much more advanced stages of scientific development. Here we find it in the eleventh century, expressing itself in raising doubts against the theoretical foundations of Greek astronomy, and proposing to correct them on the basis of the new observational results

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

There is an emerging consensus that the astronomy that preceded Copernicus had a lot to do with the kind of astronomy which was later proclaimed by him, and that the foundations of Copernican astronomy were already laid in major Muslim intellectual centers, with some particular significance to al-Andalus itself, but more importantly to the cities of the Muslim east. This should not be surprising to the students of Copernicus because they know very well at least the names of Jábir ibn Aflah (first half of the twelfth century), and al-Bi.trüjí (c) Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0)

GEORGE SALIBA
AUTHORSHIP OF THE ISTIDRÀK
ANDALUSIAN ASTRONOMY IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
GEORGE SALBA
CONCLUSION
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