Alternative titles: Kitāb fī Ṭulūʿ al-thawābit (al-Bīrūnī, al-Qānūn VI.5); Kitāb fī Ẓuhūr al-kawākib al-thābita (Thābit b. Qurra); Kitāb al-Anwāʾ (al-Masʿūdī, Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī).

An Arabic translation of Ptolemy’s Phaseis (A.4) is mentioned with the title Kitāb al-Anwāʾ by the early-9^th-century historian al-Masʿūdī and by the 11^th-century western-Islamic biobibliographer Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī. A significant part of the contents of the second book of the Phaseis, consisting of a parapegma, survives in al-Bīrūnī’s chronological work al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʿan al-qurūn al-khāliya. There he reproduces the Kitāb al-Anwāʾ by Sinān b. Thābit (a son of Thābit b. Qurra), which was written for the caliph al-Muʿtaḍid (892–902) and is itself lost. Samsó & Rodríguez analysed this section in detail and established the similarities with, and differences from, the extant Greek version.

In his treatise on lunar crescent visibility, Thābit b. Qurra (d. 901) presents a method from the Phaseis for correcting the arcus visionis, which must stem from the lost first book. In the chapter on the heliacal risings and settings of the fixed stars  in his major astronomical work, al-Qānūn al-Masʿūdī (Chapter IX.7, pp. 1129–1132), al-Bīrūnī mentions Ptolemy’s values of the arcus visionis for fixed stars of the first and second magnitudes (respectively 12° and 15°), which are not mentioned in the Almagest or Planetary Hypotheses. He then cites from the Phaseis a statement concerning the difficulty of predicting the visibility of fixed stars of smaller magnitude, apparently from the introduction of Book II. Finally, he explains the same method for correcting the arcus visionis as found in Thābit b. Qurra, repeatedly referring to Ptolemy in the third person. In a different chapter of al-Qānun al-Masʿūdī (VI.6, p. 641), al-Bīrūni refers to Ptolemy’s mention in the Phaseis of observations of anwāʾ by Meton and Euktemon.

Bibl.: al-Masʿūdī, Kitāb al-tanbīh wa-l-ishrāf (ed. de GoejeMichael Jan de Goeje, Kitāb al-tanbīh wa-l-ishrāf li-Abī l-Ḥasan ʿAlī bin al-Ḥusayn bin ʿAlī al-Masʿūdī, Leiden: Brill, 1893, pp. 16 and 129; tr. Carra de VauxBernard Carra de Vaux, Maçoudi. Le livre de l’avertissement et de la revision, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1896, pp. 25:1 and 180:−7); Thābit b. Qurra, Fī ḥisāb ruʾyat al-ahilla: see Morelon, ‘Fragment’, and Morelon, Thābit; al-Bīrūnī, al-Āthār al-bāqiya (ed. SachauC. Eduard Sachau, Chronologie orientalischer Völker von Albêrûnî, Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1878–1923, pp. 244–275; tr. SachauC. Edward Sachau, The Chronology of Ancient Nations. An English version of the Arabic Text of the Athâr-ul-bâkiya of Albîrûnî, or “Vestiges of the Past,” collected and reduced to writing by the author in A.H. 390–1, A.D. 1000, London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain & Ireland / Allen, 1879, pp. 233–267); al-Bīrūnī, al-Qānūn al-Masʿūdī, Chapters VI.5 and IX.7 (ed. HyderabadAbū Rayḥān Muḥammad al-Bīrūnī, al-Qānunu’l-Mas‘ūdī (Canon Masudicus). An Encyclopaedia of Astronomical Sciences, 3 vols, Hyderabad: The Dāiratu’l-Ma‘ārifi’l-Oṣmānia (Osmania Oriental Publications Bureau), 1954–1956, pp. 641:6 and 1131:1; Paris, BnF, arabe 6840, ff. 95v:3 and 160v:23); Sāʿid al-Andalusī, Ṭabaqāt al-umam (ed. CheikhoLouis Cheikho, Kitâb Tabaqât al-Umam ou Les catégories des nations par Abou Qâsim ibn Ṣâʿid l’Andalous, Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1912, p. 29:14/15; tr. BlachèreRégis Blachère, Ṣâʿid al-Andalusî. Kitâb Ṭabaḳât Al-Umam (Livre des Catégories des Nations), Paris: Larose, 1935, p. 72:8, translates inappropriately as ‘tables astronomiques’). — Carlo Alfonso Nallino, ʿIlm al-falak. Taʾrīkhu-hu ʿind al-ʿArab fī ’l-qurūn al-wusṭā, Rome: Egyptian University, 1911, pp. 134–135; Otto Neugebauer, ‘An Arabic Version of Ptolemy’s Parapegma from the “Phaseis”’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 91 (1971), p. 506; Julio Samsó and Blas Rodríguez, ‘Las «Pháseis» de Ptolomeo y el «Kitāb al-anwā’» de Sinān b. Ṯābit’, Al-Andalus 41 (1976), pp. 15–48; Julio Samsó, ‘De nuevo sobre la traducción árabe de las Pháseis de Ptolomeo y la influencia clásica en los Kutub al-Anwā’’, Al-Andalus 41 (1976), pp. 471–479; Sezgin:1979, pp. 311 and 331; Régis Morelon, ‘Fragment arabe du premier livre du Phaseis de Ptolémée’, Journal for the History of Arabic Science 5 (1981), pp. 3–22; Régis Morelon, Thābit ibn Qurra. Œuvres d’astronomie, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1987, pp. 93–112, esp. p. 107:8.