Work C.3.1
Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Yūsuf
تفسير كتاب الثمرة
Tafsīr Kitāb al-Thamara
Alternative titles: Sharḥ Kitāb al-Thamara; Kitāb al-Thamara li-Baṭlamyūs mimmā tarjama-hu wa-kashafa ʿan maʿnā-hu Aḥmad b. Yūsuf al-Kātib al-Ṭūlūnī (Vatican, BAV, Sbath 48); Kitāb al-Thamara li-Baṭlamyūs tafsīr Aḥmad b. Yūsuf kātib Āl Ṭūlūn li-amīr al-muʾminīn al-Muʿtaḍid wa-l-Muktafī raḥima-hum Allāh (Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye, 2800 and St Petersburg, IVR, D 171); Kitāb al-Thamara li-Baṭlīmūs al-ḥakīm wa-huwa miʾat faṣl tafsīr Aḥmad b. Yūsuf Kātib Āl Ṭūlūn fassara-hu li-baʿḍ ikhwāni-hi (Patna, Khuda Bakhsh, HL 2064).
A detailed commentary on the Thamara (B.1.1) by Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Yūsuf b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Dāya, who is variously described in manuscripts as ‘the astrologer’, ‘the geometrician’, ‘the Egyptian’, and ‘the secretary of the Ṭulūnids’. The commentary deals with each verbum individually and quotes the base text in full.
Origin: As explained in the commentator’s introduction, Abū Jaʿfar decided to compose a commentary on the Thamara ‘having recently come across a bad treatment of [this book] and a scandalous interpretation of its meaning’. The commentary was composed in Fusṭāṭ (Cairo) sometime between 300/912-3 (year referred to in the past tense in the commentary on verbum 100) and Abū Jaʿfar’s death, whose exact date is uncertain (334/945-6 according to Ḥājjī Khalīfa and ‘sometime after 330/941-2 and I think [more precisely] 340/951-2’ according to an anonymous source quoted by Yāqūt). One of the surviving manuscripts (Patna, Khuda Bakhsh, HL 2064) states that he wrote the commentary for one of his brothers or fellows (ikhwān), who would then be the person addressed in the second person in the introduction. Two manuscripts (Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye, 2800 and its copy St Petersburg, IVR, D 171) claim that the treatise was dedicated to the ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Muʿtaḍid bi-Llāh and al-Muktafī bi-Llāh, but this cannot be correct since they died in 902 and 908 respectively.
Content: While the bulk of the text is largely identical in all witnesses, these can be sorted into various groups characterised by the presence, or absence, of various introductions and colophons, and by different ways of dividing the verba. The version originally commented upon by Abū Jaʿfar had a total of 100 verba, as shown by multiple cross-references of his that exhibit verbum numbers. The only manuscripts preserving the verba in this order are Milan, Ambrosiana, A 29, Milan, Ambrosiana, C 86, and Rampur, Raza, Arabic 4190 (which displays a highly erratic numbering of the verba and commentary). However, these manuscripts need not be particularly close to the original, as their wording differs slightly from that of all other known witnesses throughout the text. They open with Pseudo-Ptolemy’s introduction, verbum 1 in full, an introduction by Abū Jaʿfar, and the commentary on verbum 1. Then follow the remaining 99 verba, each provided with a commentary, and the commentator’s colophon. In the case of verbum 1 only, Abū Jaʿfar’s commentary is divided into three parts, the second and third of which open by repeating the relevant parts of the verbum.
Five manuscripts (Berlin, SBPK, Sprenger 1839; Cairo, Dār al-kutub, mīqāt 962; Escorial, RBMSL, ár. 969; Patna, Khuda Bakhsh, HL 2064; and Qom, Markaz Iḥyāʾ Mīrāth, 787) omit Pseudo-Ptolemy’s introduction and the full verbum 1 (but the latter’s text is still present as part of the commentary); of these five manuscripts, only one (Patna) numbers the verba to 100. Two (Cairo and Qom) contain a total of 102 verba due to the fact that the three parts of verbum 1 quoted in the commentary were considered as independent verba and the verbum numbering was consequently shifted by 2. The remaining two manuscripts (Berlin and Escorial) designate the third part of verbum 1 in the commentary as a new verbum, thus shifting the verbum numbering by 1 for a total of 101 verba; furthermore, they lack the commentator’s colophon.
Four manuscripts (Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye, 2800 and its copy St Petersburg, IVR, D 171; Tunis, Waṭaniyya, 1441; and Vatican, BAV, Sbath 48) omit Pseudo-Ptolemy’s introduction, the full verbum 1, and also Abū Jaʿfar’s introduction, and thus open with the commentary on verbum 1; they contain a total of 102 verba due to the same shift in numbering found in the Cairo and Qom manuscripts. The same structure with 102 verba is found in the very early manuscript Tehran, Malik, 5924 and its late copies Qom, Marʿashī, 7383 and Tehran, Millī, Ar. 392; the presence of Pseudo-Ptolemy’s and Abū Jaʿfar’s introduction cannot be verified as the first pages of the Malik manuscript were lost and Pseudo-Ptolemy’s introduction was added to it in the nineteenth century.
Two manuscripts (Escorial, RBMSL, ár. 918 and Uppsala, UB, O Nova 550) preserve a reworking of the original text by the Andalusian astronomer Aḥmad b. Yūsuf b. al-Kammād (fl. 510/1116-7), in which the 100 verba and the corresponding sections of Abū Jaʿfar’s commentary were sorted into eight chapters, each dealing with a different subject (see B.1.1). Both manuscripts open with an introduction by Ibn al-Kammād, followed by Pseudo-Ptolemy’s introduction; the Uppsala manuscript also gives Abū Jaʿfar’s introduction, but omits his colophon. MS Vatican, BAV, ar. 955 contains a single chapter from this version.
Two manuscripts (Cairo, Dār al-kutub, akhlāq Taymūr 290 and its copy Cairo, Dār al-kutub, falsafa (W) 2837) preserve some extracts from the version with 100 verba, as can be seen from their numbering. One other manuscript (Qom, Marʿashī, 11579) contains only the first lines of the text in the version with 102 verba.
Finally, al-Ṭūsī mentions a version of Abū Jaʿfar’s commentary with 102 verba in which verbum 46 was found before verbum 36 and they were numbered respectively as verba 38 and 39 (cf. Zanjānī and C.3.4); this is the case in Istanbul, Köprülü, Fazıl Ahmet Paşa 1589, a witness of the base text possibly extracted from a manuscript of Abū Jaʿfar’s commentary similar to the one seen by al-Ṭūsī.
We have not been able to see Kabul, Riyāsat al-maṭbūʿāt, 398 (current location unknown) and St Petersburg, IVR, B 809.
Text: [Tehran, Malik, 5924], with additions from Martorello’s edition in angular brackets
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Bibl.: Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist (ed. FlügelGustav Flügel, Kitâb al-Fihrist, 2 vols, Leipzig: Vogel, 1871–1872, vol. I, p. 268:11–12; ed. SayyidAyman Fu’ād Sayyid, Kitāb al-Fihrist li-Abī l-Faraj Muḥammad bin Isḥāq al-Nadīm (allafa-hu sana 377 H), 4 vols, London: Al Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2009, vol. III, p. 216:2; tr. DodgeBayard Dodge, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm. A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, 2 vols, New York / London: Columbia University Press, 1970, vol. I, p. 640); Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī, Ṭabaqāt al-ʿUmam (ed. CheikhoLouis Cheikho, Kitâb Tabaqât al-Umam ou Les catégories des nations par Abou Qâsim ibn Ṣâʿid l’Andalous, Beyrouth: Imprimerie Catholique, 1912, p. 57, lines 11–12); French tr. BlachèreRégis Blachère, Ṣâʿid al-Andalusî. Kitâb Ṭabaḳât Al-Umam (Livre des Catégories des Nations), Paris: Larose, 1935, p. 113, lines 22–24; Yāqūt, Irshād al-arīb (ed. MargoliouthDavid S. Margoliouth, The Irshád al-aríb ilá ma‘rifat al-adíb or Dictionary of Learned Men of Yáqút, 7 vols, Leyden: Brill, 1907–1927, vol. II, pp. 157–160; Ibn al-Qifṭī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamā (ed. LippertJulius Lippert, Ibn al-Qifṭī’s Taʾrīḫ al-ḥukamā, Leipzig: Dieterich, 1903, p. 78, lines 17–19); Hājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn (ed. FlügelGustav Flügel, Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī al-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. II, p. 496, no. 3848; vol. III, p. 68, no. 4509, and p. 639, no. 7321; ed. YaltkayaŞerefettin Yaltkaya and Kilisli Rifat Bilge, Kashf al-ẓunūn ʿan asāmī l-kutub wa-l-funūn li-... Ḥajji Khalīfa ..., 2 vols, Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1941–1943, vol. I, cols 524–525 and col. 667; vol. II, col. 1015). — Moritz Steinschneider, ‘Iusuf ben Ibrahim und Ahmed ben Iusuf’, Bibliotheca mathematica Neue Folge 2 (1880), pp. 49–52 and 111–117, esp. pp. 113–114; UllmannManfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, Leiden: Brill, 1972, pp. 327–328; Richard Lemay, ‘Origin and Success of the Kitāb Thamara of Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf ibn Ibrāhīm from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Century in the World of Islam and the Latin West’, in Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, Ghada Karmi and Nizar Namnum (eds), Proceedings of the First International Symposium for the History of Arabic Science (Aleppo, April 5-12, 1976), Aleppo: Institute for the History of Arabic Science, 1978, vol. II, pp. 91–107; GAS VIIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. VII: Astrologie – Meteorologie und Verwandtes bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1979, p. 157; Richard Lemay, Le Kitāb aṯ-Ṯamara (Liber fructus, Centiloquium) d’Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf [Ps.-Ptolémée], 1999 [unpublished]; Franco Martorello and Giuseppe Bezza, Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf ibn al-Dāya. Commento al Centiloquio Tolemaico, Milano / Udine: Mimesis, 2013.
Ed.: Critical edition from eight manuscripts, together with an Italian translation by Franco Martorello in Martorello & Bezza. Critical edition from three manuscripts in Lemay, Le Kitāb (unpublished). Both editions follow especially the text of the two Milan manuscripts, which often differs from that of most other witnesses.
MSS |
Qom, Iḥyāʾ-i mīrāth, 787, ff. 195v–224v (undated)
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