Work C.2.3
ʿAlī ibn Riḍwān
تفسير المقالات الاربع
Tafsīr al-Maqālāt al-arbaʿ
Full title: Tafsīr al-Maqālāt al-arbaʿ fī l-qaḍāʾ bi-l-nujūm ʿalā l-ḥawādith. Alternative titles: Kitāb Sharḥ Arbaʿ maqālāt li-Baṭlamyūs, Kitāb al-Arbaʿ maqālāt wa-sharḥu-hu li-ʿAlī b. Riḍwān fī l-mawālīd wa-l-aḥkām al-nujūmiyya, Tafsīr Abī l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Riḍwān b. Jaʿfar al-Ṭabīb al-Kitāb al-Arbaʿ maqālāt.
A commentary on the Tetrabiblos in the version translated by Ibrāhīm b. al-Ṣalt/Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (A.2.2, without the additions attributed to Thābit b. Qurra). This commentary was likely written in Cairo between 1032 and 1040, but certainly after 396/1006 because of the mention of the author’s observation of the supernova of that year in Book II.2, Chapter 9).
Content: Ibn Riḍwān clearly separates quotations from the Tetrabiblos (introduced by qāla Baṭlamyūs) from his commentary (introduced by qāla al-mufassir) in order to prevent, as he explains in the preface, that the comments be confused with the original. He divides each of the four books (maqālāt) of the Tetrabiblos in three roughly equal parts (likewise called maqālāt), resulting in a total of 12 parts. These are headed by expressions of the form ‘Book 1 of the commentary by … ʿAlī b. Riḍwān on Book II of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos’, which is here abbreviated as ‘Book II.1’ etc. (For some parts, an overall number for the part (1-12, again called maqāla) is additionally mentioned; for the sake of simplicity we omit these numbers). Within the books, Ibn Riḍwān refers to the chapter numbers of the Tetrabiblos itself. The work includes a substantial quote from the Kitāb ʿArḍ miftāḥ al-nujūm attributed to Hermes (inserted after Book II.3; on this treatise see Alessandro Bausani, ‘Il Kitāb ‘arḍ miftāḥ an-nujūm attribuito a Hermes: prima traduzione araba di un testo astrologico?’, Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche) — Memorie Serie 8 27/2 (1983), pp. 83–140) and three horoscope diagrams that are used as examples for the interpretation of nativities. These are for the time of Ibn Riḍwān’s birth (as also found in his autobiography as transmitted by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa) and, most likely, for two of his patients.
Note The strict separation between base text and commentary motivated some scribes to extract the quotes from the Tetrabiblos, thus recreating the Ibrāhīm b. al-Ṣalt/Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq version of the Tetrabiblos (A.2.2) without the commentary (cf. a statement by the scribe of Tehran, Millī, Ar. 747 and passages in Najaf, al-Imām al-Ḥakīm, 236 that were obviously directly copied from the commentary; a similar situation also occurs with Abū Jaʿfar b. al-Dāya’s commentary on the Thamara (C.3.1).)
Translations This work was translated into Latin through a Spanish intermediary by Aegidius de Tebaldis at the court of King Alfonso X (r. 1252–1282; see Latin C.2.2). In al-Andalus the commentary was also read in Sephardic communities as witnessed by a Judeo-Arabic version dated 1382 (Escorial, RBMSL, ár. 913). An Ottoman Turkish translation by Sulaymān Rīyāḍī was apparently produced for Sultan Muṣṭafā III (d. 1774) in 1180/1766-7 (see the preface preserved in Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Hamidiye 785). This translation, without the translator’s preface, is also extant in Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, falak turkī Ṭalʿat 34 and Vienna, ÖNB, Mixt. 1390. All known Persian translations were produced for the Qajar prince Muḥammad Walī Mīrzā (d. 1864-5). According to a manuscript note, Mullā ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Mashhadī (probably the diligent annotator of Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds, 6349) prepared the earliest of the translations, which was transmitted in a codex that was later illuminated under the supervision of Muḥammad ʿAlī Mīrzā Bābā in Yazd before 1236/1821 (see Bonham’s online catalogue
Text: [Istanbul, Millet, Ali Emiri 2742]
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Bibl.: Ibn al-Qifṭī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamā (ed. LippertJulius Lippert, Ibn al-Qifṭī’s Taʾrīḫ al-ḥukamā, Leipzig: Dieterich, 1903, pp. 443–444); Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ (ed./tr. Savage-Smith et al.Emilie Savage-Smith, Simon Swain and Geert Jan van Gelder, A Literary History of Medicine - The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, 2020, no. 14.25); 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. VI, pp. 49–50; 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. II, col. 1781). — 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 pp. 208–210; SuterHeinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke, Leipzig: Teubner, 1900, pp. 103–104; GALCarl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2 vols, Weimar / Berlin: Felber, 1898–1902, vol. I, p. 484; Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. 2. den Supplementbänden angepasste Auflage, 2 vols, Leiden: Brill, 1943–1949, vol. I, p. 886; DSBCharles C. Gillispie (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 14 vols plus 2 supplementary vols, New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1970–1990 article ʿIbn Riḍwān’ by Roger Arnaldez; GAS VIIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. VII: Astrologie – Meteorologie und Verwandtes bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1979, p. 44; MAOSICBoris A. Rosenfeld and Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Mathematicians, Astronomers, and other Scholars of Islamic Civilization and their Works (7th–19th c.), Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), 2003, p. 159 (no. 369). — Jennifer Ann Seymore, The Life of Ibn Riḍwān and His Commentary on Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2001; Giuseppe Bezza, Claudio Tolemeo: Il secondo libro del Quadripartitum con il commento di ‘Alī ibn Riḍwān, Lugano: Agora & Co., 2014.
Ed.: None. English translation of the introduction, Book I.1, and Ibn Riḍwān’s analyses of the horoscope diagrams in Seymore, pp. 204–243 (based on four manuscripts: Istanbul, Millet, Ali Emiri 2742; Oxford, Bodleian, Marsh 206, Princeton, UL, Garrett 3515Y, and Princeton, UL, Garrett 3517Y).
MSS |
Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds, 50695, 1v–181v (12th/18th c.)
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