Work C.1.3
Thābit b. Qurra
تسهيل المجسطي
Tashīl al-Majisṭī
Alternative title: Tahyiʾat qiraʾat al-Majisṭī.
This introduction to the Almagest explains the basic terms and concepts of spherical astronomy, astronomical observations, planetary motions, and planetary phenomena. The contents is based on the Almagest and the Planetary Hypotheses, but Thābit presents the Islamic value of the obliquity of the ecliptic 23;33° and, unlike Ptolemy, assumes that the longitude of the solar apogee changes in time at the same rate as the fixed stars. No headings or separators are indicated in the manuscripts, but in his edition Morelon divides the text into seven natural sections: I. General definitions; II. The planets; III. Representation of the planetary motion; IV. Numerical data; V. Particular phenomena; VI. Sizes and distances of the planets; VII. Anomalies of the planetary motion.
According to Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, the Tashīl was never finished. The three surviving manuscripts present somewhat different versions of this work with several lacunae. The Tashīl al-Majisṭī was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona under the title De hiis que indigent expositione antequam legatur Almagesti (Latin C.1.1), which is extant in 69 manuscripts.
Text: [Morelon, with the explicit from MS Istanbul, Süleymaniye, Ayasofya 4832]
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Bibl.: Ibn al-Qifṭī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ (ed. LippertJulius Lippert, Ibn al-Qifṭī’s Taʾrīḫ al-ḥukamā, Leipzig: Dieterich, 1903, pp. 115–120, here p. 117:13–14); Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ (ed. MüllerAugust Müller, ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī l-ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ li-ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, 2 vols, Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Wahbiyya, 1882, vol. I, pp. 215–220, here p. 218:21–22; 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, Section 10.3, here 10.3.14, nos 24–26). — Daniel Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, 2 vols, St. Petersburg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1856, vol. I, pp. 546–567, esp. p. 561; Moritz Steinschneider, ‘Die arabischen Bearbeiter des Almagest’, Bibliotheca mathematica Neue Folge 6 (1892), pp. 53–62, here p. 60; SuterHeinrich Suter, Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber und ihre Werke, Leipzig: Teubner, 1900, pp. 34–38 (no. 66), esp. p. 35; Eilhard Wiedemann, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften. LXIV. Über Ṯâbit ben Qurra, sein Leben und Wirken’, Sitzungsberichte der Physikalisch-Medizinischen Sozietät zu Erlangen 52–53 (1920–1921), pp. 189–219, here p. 213; Francis J. Carmody, The Astronomical Works of Thabit b. Qurra, Berkeley / Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960, pp. 117–118 and 131–
Ed.: Critical edition and French translation in Morelon, pp. 1–17. The Latin translation was edited in Carmody, pp. 131–139.
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