Work A.1.3
Ptolemy
المجسطي
al-Majisṭī (tr. Thābit b. Qurra)
This version of the Almagest was prepared by Thābit b. Qurra (836–901) and is clearly different from his revision of the translation by Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn (A.1.2). In some parts it is a literal translation with additional explanatory sentences and references to propositions from Euclid’s Elements, while in other parts it paraphrases the original text. The Jaipur manuscript contains only Books I–V and chapters VI.1–2, while the recently identified and much earlier Patna manuscript ends with the ecliptic constellations of the star catalogue but lacks the entire Book III and some surrounding chapters. The contents of the extant books (maqāla) and their subdivision into chapters (bāb) generally run parallel to the Isḥāq-Thābit version with some small shifts in the chapter numbers in Books I (12 chapters instead of 14), II (11 instead of 13), V (17 instead of 19) and VI (13 instead of 10). The star catalogue is indicated to have been taken from the Isḥāq-Thābit version, but in fact stems from al-Ḥajjāj’s translation (A.1.1). The titles of Books I, V and VI in the Patna manuscript refer to ‘the correction / improvement of Thābit b. Qurra’ (Kitāb al-Majisṭī iṣlāḥ Thābit b. Qurrā al-Ḥarrānī), while the colophons of Books I and V in the Jaipur manuscript mention Thābit in the form ‘Thābit b. Qurra translated it (i.e., the Almagest)’ (tarjama-hu Thābit b. Qurra). Two anonymous abridgements of all thirteen books of Thābit’s translation (C.1.34 and C.1.35) have survived.
Note This translation was first identified by Grupe (‘The “Thābit-Version”’, The Latin Reception) in the Latin translation by ʿAbd al-Masīḥ of Winchester (Latin A.1.3), which partially survives in the manuscript Dresden, SLUB, Db. 87, and shortly thereafter in the likewise incomplete Arabic manuscript Jaipur, Palace Museum, 20 (‘Thābit ibn Qurra’s Version’, ‘Manuscript Jaipur 20’).
Text: [Jaipur, Palace Museum, 20; from the end of Book VI onwards: Patna, Khuda Bakhsh, HL 3390]
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Bibl.: Ibn al-Qifṭī, Taʾrīkh al-ḥukamāʾ (ed. LippertJulius Lippert, Ibn al-Qifṭī’s Taʾrīḫ al-ḥukamā, Leipzig: Dieterich, 1903{p. 119:15–16}; German tr. KappA. G. Kapp, ‘Arabische Übersetzer und Kommentatoren Euklids, sowie deren math.-naturwiss. Werke auf Grund des Taʾrīkh al-Ḥukamāʾ des Ibn al-Qifṭī. II’, Isis 23 (1935), pp. 54–99, here p. 65). — Paul Kunitzsch, Der Almagest. Die Syntaxis Mathematica des Claudius Ptolemäus in arabisch-lateinischer Überlieferung, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974, pp. 25–26 and 33; Dirk Grupe, ‘The ‘Thābit-Version’ of Ptolemy’s Almagest in MS Dresden Db.87’, Suhayl 11 (2012), pp. 147–153; Dirk Grupe, The Latin Reception of Arabic Astronomy and Cosmology in Mid-Twelfth-Century Antioch. The Liber Mamonis and the Dresden Almagest, PhD dissertation, The Warburg Institute, 2013, esp. pp. 91–95 and 125–134; Dirk Grupe, ‘Thābit ibn Qurra’s Version of the Almagest and Its Reception in Arabic Astronomical Commentaries (based on the presentation held at the Warburg Institute, London, 5th November 2015)’, in David Juste, Benno van Dalen, Dag Nikolaus Hasse and Charles Burnett (eds), Ptolemy’s Science of the Stars in the Middle Ages, Turnhout: Brepols, 2020, pp. 139–157; Dirk Grupe, ‘Manuscript Jaipur 20 and the Arabic Translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest by Thābit ibn Qurra’, in Fahameddin Başar, Mustafa Kaçar, M. Cüneyt Kaya and A. Zişan Furat (eds), The 1st International Prof. Dr. Fuat Sezgin Symposium on History of Science in Islam Proceedings Book. June 13-15, 2019, Istanbul: Istanbul University Press, 2020, pp. 139–149.
Ed.: None.
MSS |
Patna, Khuda Bakhsh, HL 3390, ff. 1v–167v (604/1207)
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