Work A.6.1
Ptolemy
كتاب تسطيح بسيط الكرة
Kitāb Tasṭīḥ basīṭ al-kura
The Arabic version of Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium (A.6), which is lost in the original Greek. Ibn al-Nadīm only knew the Arabic version of Pappus’s commentary on this work translated by Thābit b. Qurra. However, the opening words of the Planisphaerium are quoted literally in a treatise by Ibrāhīm b. Sinān b. Thābit (d. 946; cf. Kunitzsch, ‘The Role’, pp. 151–153, and Saidan). This shows that the Arabic translation must have been made before
The comments by the Andalusian mathematician Maslama al-Majrīṭī (d. 398/1007-8), which survive as separate works in Arabic (C.6.1 and C.6.2), played a significant role as part of the Latin translations of the Planisphaerium made from the Arabic (Latin A.6.1 and A.6.2). Because the extant Arabic version differs at many places from the Latin version, Kunitzsch & Lorch (pp. 7–8) call the former the ‘eastern recension’, while there must have been a ‘western recension’ of the Arabic text from which the Latin was made (cf. also Kunitzsch, ‘Fragments’).
Text: [Sidoli & Berggren (following their division into twenty sections in two parts)]
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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. 269:9; 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. 218:89; 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. II, p. 642); Ḥājjī 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. 288 and vol. V, pp. 61–62; 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, col. 403 and vol. II, col. 1404). — 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. 215; GAS VFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. V: Mathematik bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1974, p. 170; Ahmed S. Saidan, The Works of Ibrahim ibn Sinan. With Two more Tracts: 1. By Thabit ibn Qurra. 2. By al-Sijzi, Kuwait: The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters / Arabic Heritage Department, 1983, p. 312; Christopher Anagnostakis, The Arabic Version of Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium, PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1984; Paul Kunitzsch, ‘Fragments of Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium in an Early Latin Translation’, Centaurus 36 (1993), pp. 97–101; Paul Kunitzsch, ‘The Second Arabic Manuscript of Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 9 (1994), pp. 83–89; Paul Kunitzsch, ‘The Role of al-Andalus in the Transmission of Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium and Almagest’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 10 (1995–1996), pp. 147–155; Richard P. Lorch, ‘Ptolemy and Maslama on the Transformation of Circles into Circles in Stereographic Projection’, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 49 (1995), pp. 271–284; Nathan Sidoli and J. Lennart Berggren, ‘The Arabic Version of Ptolemy’s Planisphere or Flattening the Surface of the Sphere: Text, Translation, Commentary’, SCIAMVS 8 (2007), pp. 37–139.
Ed.: Critical edition, English translation, and detailed commentary in Sidoli & Berggren, including the citations in the notes by Maslama al-Majrīṭī and the Latin translation of Hermann of Carinthia
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