Work C.1.25
Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī
في الطريق أنّ مركز الحامل على منتصف ما بين مركزي البروج ومعدّل المسير
Fī l-Ṭarīq alladhī bi-hi ʿalima Baṭlamyūs anna markaz al-ḥāmil ʿalā muntaṣaf mā bayna markazay l-burūj wa-muʿaddil al-masīr
Full title: Faṣl fī l-Ṭarīq alladhī bi-hī ʿalima Baṭlamyūs anna markaz al-ḥāmil fī kulli wāḥid min al-kawākib al-ʿulwiyya ʿalā muntaṣaf mā bayna markazay l-burūj wa-muʿaddil al-masīr.
A short note on Ptolemys motivation for the introduction of the equant in Almagest X based on his planetary observations. This is Section II.8 of al-Shīrāzī’s Nihāyat al-idrāk fī dirāyat al-aflāk, but in the MSS Edinburgh, EUL, Or. 397 and Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds, 5452 it is found as an independent work appended to al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.18). The version extant in Edinburgh differs slightly from that in the other witnesses: it lacks a heading, but provides an additional criticism of Ptolemy’s method at the end (cf. the edition in Gamini & Masoumi Hamedani, p. 67).
Origin: Al-Shīrāzī finished his Nihāyat al-idrāk in Sivas in Shaʿbān 680/November-December 1281 (Niazi). However, MS Oxford, Bodleian, Thurston 3 is dated 660/1262, with some parts copied in 675/1277. It was written by al-Shīrāzī’s disciple or close collaborator Suhrāb b. Amīr al-Ḥājj, the same scribe who also copied
Text: [Oxford, Bodleian, Thurston 3]
(101v–102r) إنّ بطلميوس أخذ بالرصد في سنين متوالية مقدار الرجوع أعني الدرج التي يرجع فيها الكوكب من فلك البروج من الوقوف الأوّل إلى الوقوف الثاني — ولأنّه استخرج الحركات والنسبة المذكورة من جداول القدماء قبل التصحيح قال في كتابه إنّه وجد هذا الخطّ ضعف هذا الخطّ بالتقريب. وهو أعلم بالسرائر إنّه هو العليم الحكيم.
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Bibl.: SuterHeinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke, Leipzig: Teubner, 1900, pp. 158–159 (no. 387); GAS VIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. VI: Astronomie bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1978, p. 90 (no. 5c) and p. 168; F. Jamil Ragep, ‘Shīrāzī’s Nihāyat al-Idrāk: Introduction and Conclusion’, Tarikh-e Elm 11 (2013), pp. 41–57; Amir Mohammad Gamini and Hossein Masoumi Hamedani, ‘Al-Shīrāzī and the Empirical Origin of Ptolemy’s Equant in His Model of the Superior Planets’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 23 (2013), pp. 47–67; Kaveh Niazi, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī and the Configuration of the Heavens. A Comparison of Texts and Models, Dordrecht: Springer, 2014, esp. p. 85; Fateme Savadi, The Historical and Cosmographical Context of Hayʾat al-arḍ with a Focus on Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī’s Nihāyat al-Idrāk, PhD dissertation, McGill University, 2018, esp. pp. 21–44 and 107–108.
Ed.: Critical edition, based on the Mashhad manuscript and two manuscripts of the Nihāyat al-idrāk, in Gamini & Masoumi Hamedani, pp. 64–67, with an English translation on pp. 61–64.
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