Work C.1.42
al-Birjandī
شرح تحرير المجسطي
Sharḥ Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī
Alternative titles: Sharḥ Majisṭī, Ḥāshiyyat Mullā ʿAbd al-ʿAlī Bīrjandī bar Sharḥ Majisṭī, al-Sharḥ Mullā ʿAbd al-ʿAlī bar Taḥrīr khwāja bar Majisṭī Baṭlamyūs.
An extensive commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.18), which in most manuscripts is dated Saturday, 10 Dhū l-qaʿda 921/15 December 1515 (other copies mention a Saturday in Dhū l-ḥijja 921/January-February 1516 as the date of completion). Niẓām al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn al-Birjandī thus wrote this work after his commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s Tadhkira and before his commentaries on the Zīj of Ulugh Beg and al-Nīsābūrī’s al-Risāla al-Shamsiyya fī l-ḥisāb. In the preface, al-Birjandī praises al-Nīsābūrī for his commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr (C.1.38), but states that he had noted several problems in it which he wanted to solve. He had been engaged with the Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī since his youth and had written numerous glosses in the margins of his own copy, and now intended to collect these in a commentary. The preface is addressed to a ‘community of esteemed scholars’ (jamāhīr al-fuḍalāʾ al-mutaʾakhkhirīn). This and the fact that the extant manuscripts are barely, if at all, annotated by readers may indicate that, different from al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr, this text was not studied in a scholastic environment.
Content: Al-Birjandī’s commentary on al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī covers on average about 400 folios of prose text and is thus almost twice as long as al-Nīsābūrī’s already extensive commentary, from which al-Birjandī incorporates selected text portions and figures. He further integrates some marginal annotations which were preserved in the early manuscripts of al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr (including annotations which likely derive from al-Ṭūsī himself), additional references to Abū Rayḥān (al-Bīrūnī) as well as material that was likely borrowed from al-Samarqandī’s Sharḥ Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī (C.1.37) (on the latter, see also Taro Mimura, ‘The Attribution of an Arabic Commentary on Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Taḥrīr al-Majisṭī to Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī’, Nazariyat 8/2 (2022), pp. 145–166).
For the first seven books (maqālāt) the commentary follows the outline provided by al-Ṭūsī, which goes back to the original structure of the Almagest. In the following, al-Birjandī’s commentary puts a stronger emphasis on individual chapters (referred to as fuṣūl, as in the Taḥrīr) than on the books of the Almagest. He rearranges the order of the chapters in order to bring together material on related topics. For example, he appends his explanations of the constellations in the southern hemisphere (Book VIII) to those for the northern one in Chapter VII.5. Furthermore, he combines Chapter X.7 (The Three Oppositions Observed for Mars) with Chapters XI.1 (Demonstration of the Eccentricity of Jupiter) and XI.5 (Demonstration of Saturn’s Eccentricity), as well as Chapter X.8 (Demonstration of the Size of the Epicycle of Mars) with Chapters XI.2 (Demonstration of the Size of Jupiter’s Epicycle) and XI.3 (On the Correction of the Periodic Motions of Jupiter). He deals with Chapter X.9 (On the Correction of the Periodic Motions of Mars) together with Chapters XI.3 (On the Correction of the Periodic Motions of Jupiter) and XI.4 (On the Epoch of Jupiter’s Periodic Motions). The topic of Chapter X.10 (On the Epoch Positions of Mars in Mean Motion) is treated together with the content of Chapters XI.4 (On the Epoch Positions of Jupiter’s Periodic Motions) and XI.8 (On the Epoch Positions of Saturn in Mean Motion). Finally, he combines Chapters XI.11 (Planetary Equation Tables) and XI.12 (Computation of Planetary Positions from Tables), as usual without actually providing the tables.
The text of the commentary consists of quotes from al-Ṭūsī’s recension (introduced by qawlu-hu), which are often the same text portions that al-Nīsābūrī selected for his commentary. These are followed by al-Birjandī’s comments highlighted by red overlines rather than being introduced by aqūlu, as in other texts of the Almagest commentary tradition such as al-Ṭūsī, al-Nīsābūrī and al-Samarqandī.
Text: [London, BL, IO Islamic 681]
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Bibl.: SuterHeinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke, Leipzig: Teubner, 1900, pp. 187–188 (no. 456); Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. 2. den Supplementbänden angepasste Auflage, 2 vols, Leiden: Brill, 1943–1949, vol. II, p. 591; Ihsanoglu:1997, vol. I, pp. 101–111 (no. 48), esp. p. 109; 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, pp. 314–316 (no. 938, A7); BEAThomas Hockey (ed.), The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, 2 vols, Dordrecht: Springer, 2007 article ‘Birjandī’ by Takanori Kusuba; EI³Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson, Encyclopaedia of Islam Three, 51 fascicules up to 2019, Leiden: Brill, 2007– article ‘al-Bīrjandī’ by Mohammad K. Azarian.
Ed.: None.
MSS |
Hyderabad, OMLRI, riyāḍī 448, ff. 1r–314v (beginning and end missing, undated)
Kolkata, NL, Buhar Arabic 345, 386 ff. (1245/1829)
Najaf, al-Imām al-Ḥakīm, 471, ff. 1v–342r (undated)
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