Work C.3.2
Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad al-Iṣbahānī
تفسير كتاب الثمرة
Tafsīr Kitāb al-Thamara
Alternative title: Sharḥ Kitāb al-Thamara.
A commentary on the Thamara (B.1.1) by Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī l-Iṣbahānī (or al-Iṣfahānī), about whom nothing is known. The work is mentioned in al-Bīrūnī’s Maqāla fī sayr sahmay al-saʿāda wa-l-ghayb (composed before 1036, cf. Haddad et. al.) and al-Ṭūsī’s Persian commentary on the Thamara (C.3.4, cf. Zanjānī). Although the work is lost as a stand-alone text, its content can be partially reconstructed, since both al-Bīrūnī and al-Ṭūsī quote (or paraphrase) various passages from it and discuss these; furthermore, one witness of al-Ṭūsī’s commentary contains 29 glosses excerpted from a work by one ‘Abū l-ʿAbbās’, evidently al-Iṣbahānī (see MS Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye, 2800, and Lemay; further anonymous glosses in the same witness may also stem from al-Iṣbahānī).
The commentary probably dealt with each verbum separately and was fairly extensive. Al-Bīrūnī states that the text he quotes stems from Abū l-ʿAbbās’s commentary on verbum 90, although the content of the passage relates to verbum 88 of the Thamara. In his discussion of verbum 97, al-Ṭūsī states that it was designated as verbum 99 in the manuscripts of Abū Jaʿfar’s and Abū l-ʿAbbās’s commentaries available to him (ed. Zanjānī, p. 75). Hence, it seems that Abū l-ʿAbbās commented on the well-attested version of the Thamara with verbum numbers shifted by 2 that originated in a particular manuscript of Abū Jaʿfar’s commentary (the ‘102-verba version’; see C.3.1). It follows that al-Iṣbahānī’s commentary postdates Abū Jaʿfar’s, which was composed after 300/912-3.
Text: [Istanbul, Nuruosmaniye, 2800]
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Bibl.: GAS VIIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. VII: Astrologie – Meteorologie und Verwandtes bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1979, p. 45 (no. 2b) and p. 167; Fuad I. Haddad, David Pingree and Edward S. Kennedy, ‘Al-Bīrūnī’s Treatise on Astrological Lots’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 1 (1984), pp. 9–54, here pp. 30–33 and 48; Richard Lemay, Le Kitāb aṯ-Ṯamara (Liber fructus, Centiloquium) d’Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf [Ps.-Ptolémée], 1999 [unpublished], vol. I, p. 64 and vol. II, p. 20; Jalīl Akhawān Zanjānī, Šarḥ-e Samare-ye Baṭlamyus. Xwāje Naṣir al-Din Ṭusi (597-672 L.H.), Tehran: Āyene-ye Mirās, 1999, pp. 3:1, 4:16–20, 38:10–12, 42:14–16, 52:11–14, and 75:17–18.
Ed.: The glosses in the Nuruosmaniye manuscript are unedited. The passages in al-Bīrūnī’s Maqāla fī sayr sahmay al-saʿāda wa-l-ghayb and al-Ṭūsī’s commentary on the Thamara are included in the editions by Haddad et al. and Zanjānī respectively.
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