Work C.1.18
Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī
تحرير المجسطي
Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī
Alternative titles: Taḥrīr Majiṣṭī fī ʿilm al-hayʾa, Taḥrīr Kitāb al-Majisṭī, Sharḥ al-Majisṭī, al-Majisṭī.
The most popular recension of the Almagest. With more than 150 known manuscript copies, this work outranks the three extant Arabic versions of the Almagest by far and appears to have entirely replaced the use of the stand-alone translations, especially in the Eastern Islamic world. It relies primarily on the translation by Ishāq b. Ḥunayn revised by Thābit b. Qurra (A.1.2), but also includes a number of references to al-Ḥajjāj’s translation (A.1.1) and to the version by Thābit b. Qurra (A.1.3). According to the authorial colophon, al-Ṭūsī finished this work on 5 Shawwal 644/13 February 1247, while he resided at the citadel of Alamut. He dedicated the book to an otherwise unknown Ḥusām al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Sīwāsī, who was wrongly assumed to be the author of a commentary on the Taḥrīr by Sezgin (GAS VI).
While no autograph copy of the Taḥrīr appears to have survived, there are numerous manuscripts that claim to be based either on an autograph or on an early copy made by Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī. A codex of the Taḥrīr said to be in the handwriting of al‐Ṭūsī himself was in the possession of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn al-Ṭihrānī (d. 1285/1868-9) and apparently later found a new owner in Europe (see Ansari, p. 25, and Dharīʿa). Al-Shīrāzī produced a copy from al‐Ṭūsī’s 644/1247 autograph before 678/1279; this copy is lost but was transmitted through students of al-Shīrāzī in MSS Paris, BnF, ar. 2485 and Cairo, Dār al-kutub, K (falak) 3822. Further copies by his students, preserved in MSS Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Ayasofya 2583 and Dublin, Chester Beatty, Ar. 3637, may be based on the same exemplar (on early copies related to the autograph and to al-Shīrāzī, see also LAMT, pp. 311–312). Al-Shīrāzī’s significant role in the transmission of al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr is also evident from a note by his hand dated late Shaʿbān 684/October 1285 (MS Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye, 2941, f. 1r) in which he mentions having arranged for a copy of the Taḥrīr to be made for the library of a certain Jamāl al-Dīn but expresses regret for lacking the time to thoroughly review and correct it.
In a small number of manuscripts from the seventh/thirteenth century, the Taḥrīr is transmitted together with al-Ṭūsī’s Mutawassiṭāt (the ‘Middle Books’), his collection of revised treatises to be studied between Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s Almagest, which was likewise repeatedly copied in the Maragha milieu; see MSS Tehran, Sipahsālār, 4727; Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds, 5456, and Tehran, Dānishgāh, F 2885.
Content: The Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī follows the structure of the thirteen books (maqāla) of the Almagest as found in the Isḥāq/Thābit version (A.1.2). As stated in the preface, it contains, overall, 141 sections (faṣl, rather than bāb) as well as 196 figures or propositions (shakl), which are generally numbered with abjad numerals in the margins. Structural differences found in the version by Thābit b. Qurra (A.1.3) are mostly indicated in the margins in the form ḥāshiya wa-fī nuskhat Thābit sabʿa ʿashr bāban. Al-Ṭūsī combines several sections of Book X with those from Book XI dealing with the same topics. Thus he combines sections X.7, XI.1 and XI.5 (on the eccentricities of the superior planets); X.8, XI.2 and XI.6 (on their epicycle radii); X.9, XI.3 and XI.7 (on the correction of their motions); and X.10, XI.4 and XI.8 (on the epoch positions of their mean motions). Although the heading for Book XI precedes the discussion of sections X.7–10, Book X is indicated in its heading to have ten sections (rather than six). In the two Sipahsālār manuscripts from the seventh/thirteenth century, a sentence immediately preceding section XI.9 clarifies the situation by stating: ‘Here ends Book X, and this is the remainder of 〈Book〉 XI’ (wa-hāhunā tammat al-maqāla al-ʿāshira wa-hādhihi baqiya al-ḥādiyya ʿashra).
In the preface, al-Ṭūsī states that the work is intended for himself as well as his students, and should be considered as a reference work for scholars who come together to discuss its problems. As he formulates it himself, his aim is to simplify difficult passages, to offer solutions for problems (ḥall ashkāl) and to include what the moderns (al-muḥdathūn) invented or what was adopted by later astronomers (al-mutaʾakhkhirūn) in order to make Ptolemy’s theorems more elegant; in doing so he puts an emphasis on brevity and conciseness. He finally advises his readers to correct any mistakes they may find (see Saliba, pp. 5–6, for a translation of parts of the preface).
On the basis of a comparison of the various text versions and commentaries available to him, al-Ṭūsī rephrases, corrects, and updates Ptolemy’s text, sometimes omitting or adding a paragraph, diagram or table. He includes, for example, a sine table and a tangent table in addition to Ptolemy’s table of chords and converts dates from the Almagest to the Yazdigird epoch (see further Saliba, pp. 7–10). Al-Ṭūsī claims to have distinguished in colour the lines and lettering for diagrams which he added, thus emphasising his deviations from Ptolemy. This can still be witnessed in most surviving manuscripts: diagrams copied from the Isḥāq-Thābit translation are presented with red lines and black geometrical points, whereas the diagrams taken from other versions, e.g., Thābit’s, have black lines and red lettering. Another peculiarity of al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr is the tabular form in which parallel computations for the five planets are given as part of the running text (as opposed to tables with a fixed layout) in Books IX to XII.
Appendices
Appendix C.1.18c already appears on its own in MS Tehran, Sipahsālār, 592 (662/1264, based on the autograph, appendix supplemented by a different hand); in MS Cairo, Dār al-kutub, hayʾa Ṭalʿat 43 (670–673/1272–1274, copied by Muʾayyad al-Dīn al-ʿUrḍī’s son), as well as in MS Istanbul, Ragıp Paşa, 913 (878/1473, likewise said to be based on the autograph, appendix in the margin). Both MS Sipahsālār 592 and MS Ragıp Paşa 913 give what may be an earlier title of the appendix (Istikhrāj dhālika bi-l-jabr wa-l-muqābala) and attribute it to al-muṣannif, apparently an author of significant authority (ʿazza naṣru-hu in MS Sipahsālār 592), most likely al-Ṭūsī himself. On the other hand, three out of the five known manuscripts deriving from an exemplar produced for the Maragha preacher Maḥmūd al-Khaṭīb in 663/1265 (which in turn was based on the autograph) include C.1.18a and C.1.18b without C.1.18c (the other two copies omit the appendices altogether). All other extant manuscripts directly based on the 644/1247 autograph contain none of the appendices. The earliest manuscript that features all three appendices as a set in the common order a, b, c is MS Tehran, Sipahsālār, 4727, copied in 671/1273, with the appendices in the hand of the main scribe. Also several early copies based on an exemplar in Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī’s hand (which itself is lost) include the appendices in this order. This outline of the tradition suggests that appendices C.1.18a and C.1.18b on the one hand, and C.1.18c on the other, originated independently in the first half of the 660s/1260s, the early period of activity of the Maragha observatory, and that they were only combined around 670/1270, possibly under al-Shīrāzī’s influence.
We know of only very few manuscripts that contain one or more of the appendices without the Taḥrīr, e.g., C.1.18b and C.1.18c in the very late MS Tehran, Majlis, 1189 S; however, since this manuscript also contains several of al-Ṭūsī’s recensions of the ‘Middle Books’, it probably belongs to the same Maragha tradition. In MS Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds, 12225, C.1.18b is found together with two short treatises by al-Ṭūsī and several works of astronomers associated with the observatory of Ulugh Beg in Samarqand in the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century. The fact that none of the commentaries on the Taḥrīr, nor the translations mentioned below, include the appendices strengthens the assumption that the set was not perceived as part of the original work.
Glosses
Translations
Text: [Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye, 2941]
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Bibl.: Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn (ed. FlügelGustav Flügel, Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī l-kutub wa-l-funūn. Lexicon bibliographicum et encyclopaedicum a Mustafa ben Abdallah Katib Jelebi dicto et nomine Haji Khalifa celebrato compositum, 7 vols, Leipzig: Bentley / London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1835–1858, vol. V, pp. 385–386; ed. YaltkayaŞerefettin Yaltkaya and Kilisli Rifat Bilge, Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī l-kutub wa-l-funūn li-... Ḥājji Khalīfa ..., 2 vols, Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1941–1943, vol. II, col. 1594). — Moritz Steinschneider, ‘Die arabischen Uebersetzungen aus dem Griechischen. Zweiter Abschnitt: Mathematik’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 50 (1896), pp. 161–219 and 337–417, here p. 205; SuterHeinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke, Leipzig: Teubner, 1900, pp. 146–153 (no. 368); GALCarl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols, Weimar / Berlin: Felber, 1898–1902, vol. I, p. 511; GALSCarl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Supplementbände, 3 vols, Leiden: Brill, 1937–1942, vol. I, pp. 925 and 930–
Ed.: Critical edition (pp. 50–91) and Persian translation (pp. 95–133) of Book IX (including the tables) in Ansari. Critical edition of chapters XIII.1–3 together with a short analysis of the eight early manuscripts used in Nikfahm-Khubravan.
MSS |
Tehran, Sipahsālār, 593, pp. 1–241 (1079/1668)
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Arabic commentaries
Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Samarqandī, Sharḥ Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.37)
Niẓām al-Dīn al-Ḥasan al-Nīsābūrī, Tafsīr Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.38)
Muddaʿiyyāt ashkāl al-Majisṭī li-Baṭlamyūs al-Qalawdī (C.1.39)
Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī (?), 〈Sharḥ Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī〉 (C.1.45)
Muḥammad Hāshim al-Jīlānī, Sharḥ Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.47)
Ismāʿīl Khātūnābādī (?), Taʿlīq ʿalā Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.50)