Islamic Astronomy Research Articles

A history of Arabic astronomy: planetary theories during the golden age of Islam

A History of Arabic Astronomy is a comprehensive survey of Arabic planetary theories from the eleventh century to the fifteenth century based on recent manuscript discoveries. George Saliba argues that the medieval period, often called a period of in Islamic intellectual history, was scientifically speaking, a very productive period in which astronomical theories of the highest order were produced. Based on the most recent manuscript discoveries, this book broadly surveys developments in Arabic planetary theories from the eleventh century to the fifteenth. Taken together, the primary texts and essays assembled in this book reverse traditional beliefs about the rise and fall of Arabic science, demonstrating how the traditional age of decline in Arabic science was indeed a Golden Age as far as astronomy was concerned. Some of the techniques and mathematical theorems developed during this period were identical to those which were employed by Copernicus in developing his own non-Ptolemaic astronomy. Significantly, this volume will shed much-needed light on the conditions under which such theories were developed in medieval Islam. It clearly demonstrates the distinction that was drawn between astronomical activities and astrological ones, and reveals, contrary to common perceptions about medieval Islam, the accommodation that was obviously reached between religion and astronomy, and the degree to which astronomical planetary theories were supported, and at times even financed, by the religious community itself. This in stark contrast to the systematic attacks leveled by the same religious community against astrology. To students of European intellectual history, the book reveals the technical relationship between the astronomy of the Arabs and that of Copernicus. Saliba's definitive work will be of particular interest to historians of Arabic science as well as to historians of medieval and Renaissance European science.

A Non-Ptolemaic Lunar Model From Fourteenth-Century Central Asia

As early as the ninth century, Muslim astronomers started refining the Ptolemaic astronomy which, by this time, had been fully adopted as the framework of their research. Already, in the early part of this century, refinements were based on improved observational techniques, and included a variety of phenomena such as the length of the seasons, the solar equation, mean motion parameters, and many others.

The Astronomical Tradition Of Maragha: A Historical Survey And Prospects for Future Research

This paper surveys the results established so far by the on-going research on the planetary theories in Arabic astronomy. The most important results of the Maragha astronomers are gathered here for the first time, and new areas for future research are delineated. The conclusions reached demonstrate that the Arabic astronomical works mentioned here not only elaborate the connection between Arabic astronomy and Copernicus, but also that such activities, namely the continuous reformulation of Greek astronomy, were not limited to a specific group of astronomers or to a specific geographical area. It is shown that such activities were spread over a period of more than seven hundred years, from the early eleventh till the sixteenth century, and over an area stretching from the Andalusian peninsula in the west to the farthest reaches of Central Asia in the east.

Essay Review: Arabic Astronomy in Byzantium, the Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades

Essay Review: Arabic Astronomy in Byzantium, the Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades

Duhem, the Arabs, and the history of cosmology

Duhem has generally been understood to have maintained that the major Greek astronomers were instrumentalists. This view has emerged mainly from a reading of his 1908 publication To Save the Phenomena. In it he sharply contrasted a sophisticated Greek interpretation of astronomical models (for Duhem this was that they were mathematical contrivances) with a naive insistence of the Arabs on their concrete reality. But in Le Systeme du monde, which began to appear in 1913, Duhem modified his views on Greek astronomy considerably; his more subtle understanding included the recognition that many Greeks subordinated mathematical astronomy to physical theory. But he could not completely repudiate his earlier views about Greek astronomy in part because his extreme nineteenth century prejudices led him to continue to insist on a clear-cut demarcation between Greek and Arabic astronomy. The inevitable result is a certain unevenness in the Systeme and some glaring inconsistencies.

The rôle of maragha in the development of islamic astronomy : a scientific revolution before the renaissance

The rôle of maragha in the development of islamic astronomy : a scientific revolution before the renaissance

Indian and Islamic Astronomy at Jayasimha's Court

Indian and Islamic Astronomy at Jayasimha's Court

The Influence of Islamic Astronomy in Chinaa

The Influence of Islamic Astronomy in China^a

Theory and Observation in Islamic Astronomy: The Work of IBN AL-SHĀTIR of Damascus

Theory and Observation in Islamic Astronomy: The Work of IBN AL-SHĀTIR of Damascus

La Theorie Astronomique Selon Jabir IBN Aflah (English Abstract)

Ptolemy’s Almagest has been criticized by Islamic astronomers in two different ways: criticisms of Ptolemaic parameters and criticisms, like those of the Maragha school, of the geometrical models used as they contradicted certain basic principles like the principle of uniform motion.Jabir ibn Aflah’s Islah al-Majisti seems to be outside the two aforementioned ways of criticizing the Almagest for he gives an excellent and faithful qualitative account of his kinematical models. He pretends, on one side, to give a complement to the mathematical basis of the Almagest and, on the other, he seems to consider this work as having, in his time, only a theoretical value; due to the modifications of parameters introduced by Islamic astronomers, the Almagest itself has lost, in Jabir’s opinion, all practical value for computation. He also gives a list of mistakes he thinks Ptolemy made, but I will limit myself here to analyse what Jabir seems to consider a methodological lack of which I will give only one example: Jabir criticizes Ptolemy’s determination of the relative positions of the centre of the equant, the centre of the deferent and the centre of the universe in the case of the models for the superior planets, for he considers that Ptolemy did not give any proof of the fact that the centre of the deferent is the midpoint between the two others.

Bibliographical Notes on Islamic Astronomy, The Results of a Study of the Exact Sciences Among the Jews of Yemen

The people of Yemen as a whole, and the Jews of that country in particular, possess a very rich cultural heritage, including achievements in the field of astronomy. The medieval astronomical sources were the subject of an exhaustive study by David A. King (Mathematical Astronomy in Medieval Yemen, Malibu 1983). Some material concerning Jewish interest in the subject was collected by Bernard R. Goldstein (The Survival of Arabic Astronomy in Hebrew, J. for the Hist, of Arabic Science 3, 1979, 31-39, note 2c.) The author of this paper has recently completed a monograph on the exact sciences among the Jews of Yemen. In this paper we present some discrete items of mainly bibliographic interest which emerged from that study. Note that our sources are all Arabic manuscripts, written in Hebrew characters.

Prime meridians in medieval Islamic astronomy

Prime meridians in medieval Islamic astronomy

The Sacred Direction in Islam A Study of the Interaction of Religion and Science in the Middle Ages

In Islam the sacred direction is towards Mecca, or more precisely, towards the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. Muslims face this direction in prayer and during various other ritual acts. Muslim astronomers from the 9th century onwards dealt with the determination of the qibla, as the sacred direction is called in Arabic. They treated it as a problem of mathematical geography and they produced highly sophisticated trigonometric and geometric solutions. They even compiled tables displaying the qibla as an angle to the local meridian for each degree of latitude and longitude difference from Mecca.But these were not the only means used for finding the qibla, a fact immediately apparent from the orientation of medieval mosques, which in general do not face Mecca as they are supposed to. This paper addresses the question: what means were used in practice? The answer is contained in texts on folk astronomy, in which celestial phenomena are discussed without recourse to theory or computation, and texts on the sacred law, in which the qibla is always discussed because of its fundamental importance in Islamic practice. In these sources, astronomical risings and settings were advocated for the qibla. The reason for using astronomical horizon phenomena to face the Kaaba was that the Kaaba itself is astronomically aligned, a fact known in the medieval period but only rediscovered a few years ago. These findings cast new light on the origin of the Kaaba, and the author suggests that it may have been built originally as an architectural representation of an early Arab cosmology.

The Sacred Direction in Islam A Study of the Interaction of Religion and Science in the Middle Ages

In Islam the sacred direction is towards Mecca, or more precisely, towards the sacred Kaaba in Mecca. Muslims face this direction in prayer and during various other ritual acts. Muslim astronomers ...

The Astronomy of the Mamluks

Previous articleNext article No AccessDocuments & TranslationsThe Astronomy of the MamluksDavid A. KingDavid A. King Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 74, Number 4Dec., 1983 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/353360 Views: 36Total views on this site Citations: 25Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1983 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Raphael Dascalu ‘You who slumber: Awaken!’ Jewish-Muslim philosophical encounters in late-medieval Syria, Global Intellectual History 2 (Jan 2022): 1–22.https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2021.2022511 Bibliography, (Jul 2021): 343–364.https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737012928.343Azucena Hernández Pérez Art and Science in al-Andalus and the Late Medieval Mediterranean Cultures: Almohad, Nasrid and Ayyubid Astrolabes in their Context, (Dec 2020): 239–252.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53366-3_12Fien De Block Timekeeper-Teachers and their Discursive Instruments: A Material Approach to Al-Jāmiʿ al-mufīd fī bayān uṣūl al-taqwīm wa-l-mawālīd, (Sep 2020): 683–704.https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737011037.683Mustafa Yilmaz, Ibrahim Tiryakioglu The astronomical orientation of the historical Grand mosques in Anatolia (Turkey), Archive for History of Exact Sciences 72, no.66 (Sep 2018): 565–590.https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-018-0215-1David A. King Al-Khalīlī, (Mar 2016): 243–245.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9316David A. King Al-Māridīnī, Jamāl al-Dīn, and Badr al-Dīn, (Mar 2016): 260–260.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_9322David A. King Ibn al-Shāṭir:ҁAlā’ al-DīnҁAlī ibn Ibrāhīm, (Dec 2016): 1062–1065.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_692David A. King Khalīlī: Shams al-Dīn Abū ҁAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Khalīlī, (Dec 2016): 1185–1187.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_757François Charette Marrākushī: Sharaf al-Dīn Abū ҁAlī al-Ḥasan Ibn ҁAlī Ibn ҁUmar al-Marrākushī, (Dec 2016): 1401–1403.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_905David A. King Al-Khalīlī, (Aug 2014): 1–3.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9316-2J. Lennart Berggren History of Mathematics in the Islamic World: The Present State of the Art [1985], (Sep 2013): 51–71.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36736-6_4David A. King Ibn al-Shāṭir, (Jul 2014): 1–4.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9623-2David A. King Al-Māridīnī, Jamāl al-Dīn, and Badr al-Dīn, (Aug 2014): 1–1.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9322-2David A. King Ibn al‐Shāṭir: ҁAlā' al‐Dīn ҁAlī ibn Ibrāhīm, (Jan 2007): 569–570.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_692François Charette Marrākushī: Sharaf al‐Dīn Abū ҁAlī al‐Ḥasan ibn ҁAlī ibn ҁUmar al‐Marrākushī, (Jan 2007): 739–740.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_905Petra Heijden, Ian T. Durham, İhsan Fazlıoğlu, Narahari Achar, Jürgen Hamel, Adriaan Blaauw, Petra G. Schmidl, Ian T. Durham, Derek Jensen, Glenn A. Walsh, Mary Woods Scott, Jordan D. Marché, Adam Jared Apt, Woodruff T. Sullivan, Gillian Knapp, Setsuro Ikeyama, Glen M. Cooper, Alexander A. Gurshtein, Meltem Akbas, David A. King, Y. Tzvi Langermann, Behnaz Hashemipour, Emilia Calvo, Mohammed Abattouy, Glen Van Brummelen, Sonja Brentjes, Nicholas Campion, Marvin Bolt, Naoshi Fukushima, Glen M. Cooper, Richard A. Jarrell, Roland Wielen, Roland Wielen, Roland Wielen, Roland Wielen, Joseph F. MacDonnell, Paul Charbonneau, Frank K. Edmondson, Thomas A. Dobbins, Virginia Trimble, Christof A. Plicht, Richard A. Jarrell, Katherine Bracher, Christof A. Plicht, Virginia Trimble, Thomas Hockey, Jordan D. Marché, Victor K. Abalakin, László Szabados, Jiȓí Grygar, Horst Kant, Thomas A. Dobbins, Virginia Trimble, Mihkel Joeveer, Thomas A. Dobbins, William Sheehan, Daniel Kolak, Fathi Habashi, Hartmut Frommert, Thomas A. Dobbins, Steven J. Dick, Thomas R. Williams, Len Berggren, Daniel W. E. Green, Ursula B. Marvin, Brian Luzum Khalīlī: Shams al‐Dīn Abū ҁAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al‐Khalīlī, (Jan 2007): 625–626.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_757Gregg De Young Sibṭ al‐Māridīnī: Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Abū ҁAbd Allāh Badr [Shams] al‐Dīn al‐Miṣrī al‐Dimashqī, (Jan 2007): 1058–1058.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1277Carl F. Petry Islamic Egypt 640-1517, 139 (Mar 2008).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521471374Jonathan P. Berkey Culture and society during the late Middle Ages, (Dec 1998): 375–411.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521471374.015 A. I. Sabra Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence, Isis 87, no.44 (Oct 2015): 654–670.https://doi.org/10.1086/357651Benno Dalen A Statistical Method for Recovering Unknown Parameters from Medieval Astronomical Tables, Centaurus 32, no.22 (Jul 1989): 85–145.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0498.1989.tb00842.xDAVID A. KING Some Early Islamic Tables for Determining Lunar Crescent Visibility, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 500, no.1 From Deferent1 From Deferent (Jun 1987): 185–225.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1987.tb37203.xJ. L. Berggren History of Mathematics in the Islamic World: The Present State of the Art, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 19, no.11 (Mar 2016): 9–33.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026318400014796 John Neu One Hundred Ninth Critical Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences, Isis 75, no.55 (Oct 2015): 5–206.https://doi.org/10.1086/353733

An Observational Notebook of a Thirteenth-Century Astronomer

Previous articleNext article No AccessDocuments & TranslationsAn Observational Notebook of a Thirteenth-Century AstronomerGeorge SalibaGeorge Saliba Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 74, Number 3Sep., 1983 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/353306 Views: 12Total views on this site Citations: 13Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1983 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:S. Mohammad Mozaffari Astronomical observations at the Maragha observatory in the 1260s–1270s, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 72, no.66 (Sep 2018): 591–641.https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-018-0217-zS. Mohammad Mozaffari Holding or Breaking with Ptolemy's Generalization: Considerations about the Motion of the Planetary Apsidal Lines in Medieval Islamic Astronomy, Science in Context 30, no.11 (Apr 2017): 1–32.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889717000011Daniel A. Stolz POSITIONING THE WATCH HAND: ʿULAMAʾ AND THE PRACTICE OF MECHANICAL TIMEKEEPING IN CAIRO, 1737–1874, International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, no.33 (Jul 2015): 489–510.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743815000513S. Mohammad Mozaffari A Case Study of How Natural Phenomena Were Justified in Medieval Science: The Situation of Annular Eclipses in Medieval Astronomy, Science in Context 27, no.11 (Feb 2014): 33–47.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889713000379Benno van Dalen Wābkanawī: Shams al-Munajjim [Shams al-Dīn] Muḥammad ibn ҁAlī Khwāja al-Wābkanawī [Wābkanawī], (Dec 2016): 2273–2274.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1433Mercè Comes Ibn Abī al-Shukr: Muḥyī al-Milla wa-‘l-Dīn Yaḥyā AbūҁAbdallāh Ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Shukr al-Maghribī al-Andalusī [al-Qurṭubī], (Dec 2016): 1044–1046.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_672S. Mohammad Mozaffari Wābkanawīʼs prediction and calculations of the annular solar eclipse of 30 January 1283, Historia Mathematica 40, no.33 (Aug 2013): 235–261.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2013.04.001Mercè Comes Ibn Abī al‐Shukr: Muḥyī al‐Milla wa‐'l‐Dīn Yaḥyā Abū ҁAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī al‐Shukr al‐Maghribī al‐Andalusī [al‐Qurṭubī], (Jan 2007): 548–549.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_672Benno van Dalen, Donald K. Yeomans, Wayne Orchiston, Douglas Scott, Trudy E. Bell, Charles H. Smith, Jeff Suzuki, Daniel W. E. Green, Thomas R. Williams, Guo Shirong, Robert Alan Hatch, Scott W. Teare, M. Colleen Gino, Paul Charbonneau, David Jefferies, Peter Broughton, Richard P. Wilds, Thomas Dobbins, William Sheehan, László Szabados, Anneliese Schnell, Y. P. Varshni, Fernand Hallyn, Cindy Lammens, Martin Solc, Eugene F. Milone, Frieda A. Stahl, Kenneth W. Ford, Michael S. Reidy, Malcolm R. Forster, Frieda A. Stahl, Virginia Trimble, Stephen D. Snobelen, Daniel Kolak, Michael Rich, Frieda A. Stahl, Roy H. Garstang, Fathi Habashi, Gary A. Wegner, Jürgen Hamel, Richard Baum, Dennis Danielson, Alena Hadravová, Petr Hadrava, Ian T. Durham, John Rogers, Roy H. Garstang, David W. Dewhirst, Mark Hurn, Christof A. Plicht, Roy H. Garstang, Thomas R. Williams, Thomas R. Williams, Sallie Baliunas, John McFarland, Craig B. Waff, Trudy E. Bell, Christof A. Plicht, Donald K. Yeomans, Thomas D. Kinman, Mihkel Joeveer, Jordan D. Marché, Adam Mosley, Solange Grillot, Paul Charbonneau, Oliver Knill, Daniel Kolak, Lodewijk Woltjer, Thomas R. Williams, Thomas A. Dobbins, Roy H. Garstang, Christian E. Hauer, Robinson M. Yost, Alan H. Batten, Robinson M. Yost, Christof A. Plicht, John Hearnshaw Wābkanawī: Shams al‐Munajjim [Shams al‐Dīn] Muḥammad ibn ҁAlī Khwāja al‐Wābkanawī [Wābkanawī], (Jan 2007): 1187–1188.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1433Julio Samsó An Outline of the History of Maghribī Zijes from the End of the Thirteenth Century, Journal for the History of Astronomy 29, no.22 (Jul 2016): 93–102.https://doi.org/10.1177/002182869802900201George Saliba A Sixteenth-Century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy: The Work of Shams Al-Din Al-Khafri, Journal for the History of Astronomy 25, no.11 (Feb 1994): 15–38.https://doi.org/10.1177/002182869402500102George Saliba The Astronomical Tradition Of Maragha: A Historical Survey And Prospects for Future Research, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 1, no.11 (Oct 2008): 67–99.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423900001429George Saliba Solar Observations at the Maraghah Observatory before 1275: A New Set of Parameters, Journal for the History of Astronomy 16, no.22 (Jun 1985): 113–122.https://doi.org/10.1177/002182868501600202

Supplementary notes on medieval Islamic multiplication tables

The astronomical tables compiled by Muslim astronomers in the medieval period are based on the sexagesimal system, and to facilitate their computations these astronomers used multiplication tables displaying products expressed sexagesimally. In a recent publication these tables were described for the first time. The present paper points to the existence of more of these tables, as well as to tables displaying sexagesimal quotients and others for facilitating linear interpolation.

Essay Review: Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy, Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study

Essay Review: Islamic Mathematics and Astronomy, Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study

The Greek Influence on Early Islamic Mathematical Astronomy

Some concepts of Greek mathematical astronomy reached Islam in the eighth century through translations and adaptations of Sanskrit and Pahiavi texts. These represented largely non-Ptolemaic ideas and methods which had been altered in one way or another in accordance with the traditions of India and Iran. When to this mingling of Greco-Indian and Greco-Iranian astronomy was added the more Ptolemaic Greco-Syrian in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, and the completely Ptolemaic Byzantine tradition during the course of the ninth, the attention of Islamic astronomers was turned to those areas where these several astronomical systems were in conflict. This led to the development in Islam of a mathematical astronomy that was essentially Ptolemaic, but in which new parameters were introduced and new solutions to problems in spherical trigonometry derived from India tended to replace those of the Almagest.THE PROBLEM OF THE INFLUENCE of Greek mathematical astronomy upon the Arabs (and in the following I have generally excluded from consideration the related problems of astronomical instruments and star-catalogues) is immensely complicated by the fact that the Hellenistic astronomical tradition had, together with Mesopotamian linear astronomy of the Achaemenld and Seleucld periods and its Greek adaptations, already Influenced Use other cultural traditions that contributed to the development of the science of astronomy within the area In which the Arabic language became the dominant means of scientific communication in and after the seventh century a.d. An Investigation of this probelm, then, must begin with a review of those centers of astronomical studies in the seventh and eighth centuries which can be demonstrated to have influenced astronomers who wrote in Arabic. This limitation by means of the criterion of demonstrable influence will effectively exclude Armenia, where Ananias of Shirak worked in the seventh century,1 and China, where older astronomical techniques,* some apparently derived ultimately from Mesopotamian sources,* were partially replaced by Indian adaptations of Greek and Greco-Babylonian techniques rendered into Chinese at the T'ang court in the early eighth century.4 But it leaves Byzantium, Syria, Sasanian Iran, and India.While astronomy had been studied at Athens by Proclus* and observations had been made by members of the Neoplatonic Academy In the fifth and early sixth centuries,* and while Ammonius, Eutoclus, Philoponus, and Simplicius had written about astronomical problems at Alexandria in the early sixth century,7 a hundred years later the tradition was transferred to Constantinople, where Stephanus of Alexandria-perhaps in imitation of the Sasanian Zlk-i Shahriyârân-prepared in 617/618 a set of instructions with examples illustrating the use of the Handy Tables of Theon for the Emperor Ileraclius.8 Such studies, however, were soon abandoned, not to be revived in Byzantium till the ninth century, when their restoration seems to have been due to the stimulus of the desire to emulate the achievements of the Arabs. Except for the texts of the Little Astronomy* and some passages reflecting Greco-Babylonian astronomy in pseudo-Heliodorus10 and Rhe- torlus of Egypt, Byzantine astronomy !n this period was solidly Ptolemaic.The history of astronomical writings In Syriac before the rise of Islam Is difficult to trace. The works of Bar Dal?an, hls pupil Philip, and of George, the Bishop of the Arabs, indicate that sufficient knowledge of the subject must have existed to permit the casting of horoscopes; for this all that Is really needed, of course, are tables, and It Is certain that a Syriac version of the Handy Tables existed.14 There may also have been a Syriac translation of Ptolemy's Syntaxis since some of the Arabic versions arc said to have been made from that language.1* In fact, It has been claimed that Sergius of Rtsh'alnA, the early sixth century translator, was responsible for the Syriac version,1' and In any case he did write on astrology and on the motion of the Sun. …

King, David A. Islamic Astronomy and Geography

King, David A. Islamic Astronomy and Geography