Work C.1.1
al-Kindī
كتاب في الصناعة العظمى
Kitāb fī l-Ṣināʿa al-ʿuẓmā
An extensive treatise on Almagest I.1–8, dedicated to the authors’s son Aḥmad. Al-Kindī partially quotes what appears to be a modified version of al-Ḥajjāj’s translation (A.1.1), partially paraphrases Ptolemy’s text, and at many places adds his own comments, often based on Theon of Alexandria’s commentary on the Almagest. Ibn al-Nadīm’s reference to a Risāla fī Ṣināʿat Baṭlamyūs al-falakiyya by al-Kindī is presumably to this work (Rosenthal, p. 436). The extant text closes with the following remark: ‘Since we have presented the [things] of this science [i.e., astronomy] that needed to be presented [and] that are like its principles, let us complete this part of our book and we let it be followed by what follows it naturally’ (Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Ayasofya 4830, f. 80v:16–17). This seems to indicate that al-Kindī also wrote, or planned to write, a commentary on the remaining parts of the Almagest.
Content: In addition to contributions by al-Kindī himself (e.g., a discussion about the subject matter of astronomy and references to other works by himself; see Rosenthal, pp. 440–442), two main sources can be identified by a comparison with earlier works. First, Rosenthal (p. 439, n. 2) remarks that al-Kindī’s quotations show ‘a good number of modifications which may go back to an earlier revision of the translation’, i.e., of the translation of the Almagest by al-Ḥajjāj (A.1.1). Second (Rosenthal, p. 446), al-Kindī includes parts of an early translation of Theon’s commentary on the Almagest, of which we otherwise only have a brief reference in Ibn al-Nadīm’s Kitāb al-Fihrist. The treatise includes 15 figures that can all be found in Theon’s commentary but not in the Almagest itself.
Text: [ Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Ayasofya 4830]
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Bibl.: Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist (ed. FlügelGustav Flügel, Kitâb al-Fihrist, 2 vols, Leipzig: Vogel, 1871–1872, vol. I, p. 258; tr. DodgeBayard Dodge, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm. A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, 2 vols, New York / London: Columbia University Press, 1970, p. 620). — Franz Rosenthal, ‘Al-Kindī and Ptolemy’, in Studi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi della Vida, Roma: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1956, vol. II, pp. 436–456; GAS VIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. VI: Astronomie bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1978, pp. 90 (no. 4) and 153; ʿAzmī Ṭaha al-Sayyid Aḥmad, Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī. Fī l-Ṣināʿa al-ʿuẓmā, Cyprus: Dār al-shabāb, 1987; 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. 39 (no. 79, A1); BEAThomas Hockey (ed.), The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, 2 vols, Dordrecht: Springer, 2007 article ‘Kindī’ by Glen M. Cooper. Ulrich Rudolph (ed.), Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Philosophie in der islamischen Welt. Band 1. 8.-10. Jahrhundert, Basel: Schwabe, 2012, pp. 115–116 (supplemented English tr. Ulrich Rudolph, Rotraud Hansberger and Peter Adamson (eds), Philosophy in the Islamic World, vol. I: 8th-10th Centuries, Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2017, pp. 176–177); Emma Gannagé, ‘Al-Kindī, Ptolemy (and Nicomachus of Gerasa) Revisited’, Studia graeco-arabica 6 (2016), pp. 83–111.
Ed.: Critical edition in Aḥmad, pp. 115–224.
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