A collection of comments and notes to specific arguments from Books I–VI of Ptolemy’s Almagest. These excerpts include numerous diagrams and are sorted in the order of the books of the Almagest to which they refer. For example, the first two excerpts stem from al-Bīrūnī’s al-Qānūn al-masʿūdī and refer to Almagest I.3–4 (see Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad al-Bīrūnī, al-Qānunu’l-Mas‘ūdī (Canon Masudicus). An Encyclopaedia of Astronomical Sciences, 3 vols, Hyderabad: The Dāiratu’l-Ma‘ārifi’l-Oṣmānia (Osmania Oriental Publications Bureau), 1954–1956, vol. I, pp. 27–28 and 37). The sources of the remaining excerpts remain to be identified.

This collection was supposed to be read in parallel to the Almagest. All four witnesses ascribe this collection to Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī. The copy in Oxford, BL, Thurston 3 (and its derivative Oxford, BL, Marsh 720) bears strong connections with al-Ṭūsī’s colleague Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī: it was copied from a manuscript in the hand of al-Shīrāzī in 1277 and it credits al-Shīrāzī as being involved in the compilation process. This suggests that the Multaqaṭāt were composed in Marāgha and that the version in Thurston 3 derives from al-Shīrāzī’s personal copy that he took to Anatolia after leaving Marāgha (for the chronology of al-Shīrāzī’s life, see Kaveh Niazi, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī and the Configuration of the Heavens. A Comparison of Texts and Models, Dordrecht: Springer, 2014, pp. 65–67).

[Oxford, BL, Thurston 3]

[Incipit] (59v) من فصل في أنّ السماء كرية. ثمّ استدلّ بطلميوس على كرية شكل السماء بقياسات طبيعيّة. [Explicit] (69v) ونقوس الخارج وننقصه من مسير الطول في ساعة فالباقي هو المراد هذا آخر ما التقطه الإمام سلطان الحكماء نصير الملّة والدين محّمد ابن محمّد ابن الحسن الطوسي رضي الله عنه من المجسطي على حسب إصلاح بعض المتأخّرين ... فقال رضي الله عنه إنّما التقطه من سواد المصنّف رحمه الله وما كان أكثر من هذه.

Bibl.: GAS VIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. VI: Astronomie bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1978, p. 93 (no. 25).

Ed.: None.