Essay Review: Astronomical Tables in the Middle Ages: A Survey of European Astronomical Tables in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

ASTRONOMICAL TABLES IN THE MIDDLE AGES A Survey of European Astronomical Tables in the Late Middle Ages. Jose Chabas and Bernard R. Goldstein (Brill, Leiden, 2012). Pp. xx + 250. euro107. ISBN 97890-04-23058-3.In 1956 E. S. Kennedy published A survey of Islamic astronomical tables which, for more than fifty years, has guided historians of Islamic astronomy in following the evolution of the type of astronomical sources called zijes. Nothing similar has appeared for the parallel history of European astronomical tables; hence, are delighted by the publication of the present book which is most useful survey of Latin and Hebrew astronomical tables produced from the twelfth the beginning of the sixteenth century. Arabic zijes are not treated specifically although they are present everywhere because, after all, the development of European tables during this period is the result of the assimilation of Arabic materials which circulated in alAndalus (Muslim Spain) and which were, therefore, available medieval translators. This is something that the authors have made clear: we emphasize that the Iberian Peninsula was generally the locus from which astronomical knowledge flowed other parts of Europe ... (p. xviii). The clear conclusion one can extract from this book is that the European astronomical tables of the late Middle Ages are the result of an Andalusian influence and this affects the Parisian Alfonsine Tables which appeared after 1320. Originality appears in only few cases, including especially Levi ben Gerson (d. 1344).Two main traditions make their way into the Latin West. The Indian tradition is represented by al-Khwarizmfs ztj in the adaptation prepared by Maslama al-Majriti (d. 1070) and translated into Latin by Adelard of Bath (fl. 1116-50), probably in England using materials brought him from the Iberian Peninsula by Petrus Alfonsi (fl. 1 106). This tradition is also found in sources like the Tabulae Jahen of Ibn Mu'adh (d. 1093) and in the Muqtabas of Ibn al-Kammad (fl. 1116). Both of these latter zijes are extant in Latin translation (only the canons in Ibn Mu'adh's case). The Ptolemaic tradition, as result of the direct influence of the Almagest (the Handy tables seem have been known only indirectly through al-Battâni's zij), entered al-Andalus in the second half of the tenth century. Surprisingly the Preceptum canonis Ptolomei, work directly connected with the Handy tables that seems have circulated in Catalonia in the tenth century, apparently exerted little influence. To this must add the echoes of the Toledan Tables (c. 1065), in which there is confluence of al-Khwârizmi and al-Battâni, and of the extremely popular Alfonsine Tables (c. 1272), in which al-Battanfs influence predominates.The existence of this double tradition suggests the existence of Ptolemaic tables that calculate tropical planetary longitudes; those tables that follow, directly or indirectly, the tradition of al-Khwârizmi give sidereal longitudes which usually can be transformed into tropical longitudes by trepidation tables. When one considers the examples given by Chabas and Goldstein in their analysis of mean motion parameters (pp. 54-9) the obvious conclusion is that the Ptolemaic tradition predominates as result of the success of the Alphonsine Tables from the fourteenth century onward.The purpose of the book, as the authors state, is to classify and illustrate the numerous astronomical tables... (p. xviii) and present a survey of these astronomical tables, not history of (p. xix). Although general draft of such history is presented in pp. 1-10, many readers would be grateful for more detailed treatment of this topic that would allow them not get lost in the great mass of information given in the book which contains classification and many excerpts of the tables studied (see the list in pp. ix-xiv), based mainly on the research of an enormous number of Latin and Hebrew manuscripts (see pp. …