View full screen - View 1 of Lot 118. Ibn al-Shatir (d.1375), Nihayat al-su’al fi tashih al-usul, on astronomy, Egypt or Syria, Mamluk, 14th century.

Ibn al-Shatir (d.1375), Nihayat al-su’al fi tashih al-usul, on astronomy, Egypt or Syria, Mamluk, 14th century

Estimate

150,000 - 250,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Arabic manuscript on paper, 47 leaves, 30 lines to the page written in naskh in black ink, headings, chapters and keywords picked out in red, 18 diagrams in black and red, in stamped brown leather binding

26 by 17.5cm.

‘Ala al-Din ibn Ibrahim al-Shatir al-Dimishqi al-Ansari (1304-75) was a leading Mamluk astronomer, mathematician, and muwaqqit (timekeeper) of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. In this position, Ibn al-Shatir made contributions in the field of astronomical timekeeping and significant advances in the field of astronomical instrument design. He produced a magnificent sundial for the main minaret of the Umayyad Mosque that David King describes as “the most sophisticated sundial known from the medieval period” (King 2005, p.85). It is now preserved in fragmentary form in the gardens of the Archaeological Museum, Aleppo (King 2005, p.712). Other recorded instruments made by Ibn al-Shatir are in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo (inv. no.15362), and the Observatoire de Paris (King 2005, p.1010).


Ibn al-Shatir’s contributions to this field were substantial, but his legacy rests in the field of planetary theory. He advanced a geocentric theory that critiqued and reconstructed the Ptolemaic models of planetary motion, through the introduction of epicycles. The development of his theory can be traced by several successive works: a zij, based on Ptolemaic planetary theory; followed by a later treatise entitled Ta’liq al-arsad (comments on observations) which covered the observations and procedures upon which his new planetary models were based, and traced and explained astronomical uncertainties; Nihayat al-su’al fi tashih al-usul (the present text, a final inquiry concerning the rectification of planetary theory) in which he refines the Ptolemaic models and discusses his reasoning behind his new models; finally, al-zij al-jadid (the new astronomical handbook). See King 2007, p.569, and Rogers 1957, p.428.


Ibn al-Shatir’s non-Ptolemaic model appears to have little impact on his contemporaries, but his writings reappeared in early modern Europe with Copernicus. Copernicus advanced a Mercury model that was mathematically identical to that of Ibn al-Shatir, leading scholars to speculate around the transmission of astronomical ideas from the Islamic world into Europe (King 2007, p.569). Scholarship on this topic is still in its preliminary stages, but the compelling mathematical resemblance is nonetheless indicative of the sophistication of Ibn al-Shatir and the academic milieu of medieval Mamluk astronomers.


Further copies of the Nihayat are recorded in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Marsh 139, dated to the lifetime of the author in 1367 AD, Marsh 290, Marsh 501, and Hunt 547). Another copy is in Leiden University Library (in. no.MS 1116), see Brockelmann, GAL, II, p.127. The paper of the present manuscript is consistent with an early fourteenth century manufacture indicating that it must be of a similar fourteenth century date as the Bodleian manuscript mentioned above, almost certainly copied during the lifetime of the author, or at the very least shortly after his death in 1375 AD. 

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