Work C.1.15
Aḥmad ibn al-Sarī Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ
قول في بيان ما وهم فيه ابو نصر الفارابي
Qawl fī Bayān mā wahama fī-hi Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī
Full title: Qawl fī Bayān mā wahama fī-hi Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī ʿinda sharḥi-hī l-faṣl al-sābiʿ ʿashar min al-maqāla al-khāmisa min al-Majisṭī wa-sharḥ hādhā l-faṣl.
Najm al-Dīn Abū l-Futūḥ Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. al-Sarī, known as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (d. 548/1154 in Damascus) was the author of a series of treatises with detailed criticisms of his Greek and Arabic predecessors, including two more commentaries on parts of the Almagest (C.1.16 and C.1.24). The present work deals with mistakes in al-Fārābī’s Sharḥ al-Majisṭī (C.1.5) concerning the determination of the lunar parallax in ecliptical longitude and latitude from the parallax in altitude by means of the parallax table (Almagest V.19, even though the full title refers to Chapter V.17). Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ first quotes the passage concerned from the Almagest (MS Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds, 5593, pp. 81:25–82:18). He then provides literal quotations of three long passages from al-Fārābī’s commentary, for which he provides extensive criticisms.
Thomann used this work to establish that Ibn al-Ṣalāh most probably quoted the old Maʾmūnic Almagest translation by Ibn Quraysh (‘The Oldest Translation’; cf. Paul Kunitzsch, Der Almagest. Die Syntaxis Mathematica des Claudius Ptolemäus in arabisch-lateinischer Überlieferung, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974, pp. 23–24 and 60–64) and to find further, decisive evidence that al-Fārābī’s commentary is partially extant in the two Iranian manuscripts that are now associated with it (‘Al-Fārābīs Kommentar’).
Text: [Mashhad, Āstān-i Quds, 5593]
(p. 81) قول لأحمد بن محمّد بن السري في بيان ما وهم فيه أبو نصر الفارابي عند شرحه الفصل السابع عشر من المقالة الخامسة من المجسطي وشرح هذا الفصل. قال: كنت نظرت كتابًا للفاضل أبي نصر الفارابي موسومًا بشرح كتاب بطلميوس المعروف بالمجسطي فتصفّحته مستوفيًا حقّ الإصغاء والتفهّم بمعانيه بحيث انتهيت إلى أنباء الفصل السابع عشر من المقالة الخامسة — (p. 92) فلذك قال بطلميوس متى أخذنا كلّ واحد من هذين الوترين فضربناه في اختلاف منظر القمر الذي قد حصلناه في الدائرة التي تمرّ سمت الرأس. فما اجتمع في كلّ واحد منهما قسمناه على حدّة على مائة وعشرين جزءًا علمنا بما یخرج من القسمة كم اختلاف المنظر في الطول والعرض وذلك ما أردنا أن نبيّن. تمّت المقالة بحمد لله ومنّة وصلّى الله على 〈م〉حمّد وآله.
Bibl.: GAS VIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. VI: Astronomie bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1978, p. 195; 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. 177–178 (no. 485, A3); Johannes Thomann, ‘Al-Fārābīs Kommentar zum Almagest in sekundärer Überlieferung bei Ibn aṣ-Ṣalāḥ: Ein vorläufiger Bericht’, Asiatische Studien 69 (2015), pp. 99–113; Johannes Thomann, ‘The Oldest Translation of the Almagest Made for al-Maʾmūn by al-Ḥasan ibn Quraysh: A Text Fragment in Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s Critique on al-Fārābī’s Commentary’, 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. 117–138; Paul Hullmeine, ‘Correcting Ptolemy and Aristotle. Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ on Mistakes in the Almagest, On the Heavens, and Posterior Analytics’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 32 (2022), pp. 201–246, here p. 214.
Ed.: Edition and translation of some fragments in Thomann, ‘Al-Fārābīs Kommentar’, pp. 106–108, and in Thomann, ‘The Oldest Translation’, pp. 120 and 132–135.
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