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Abū l-Qāsim Aṣbagh b. Muḥammad b. Aṣbagh Ibn al-Samḥ al-Mahrī al-Gharnāṭī (d. 426/1035), known as al-Muhandis (“the geometer”), was a mathematician and astronomer with an interest in medicine, the author of a large book on history (Ibn al-Khaṭīb, al-Iḥāṭa, 428), and a disciple of Maslama b. Aḥmad al-Majrīṭī (d. 398/1007–8). Ibn al-Samḥ was born and lived in Córdoba, although he moved to Granada during the fitna (the period of civil wars after the fall of the Caliphate in 422/1031; Ibn al-ʿAbbār, 246–7), where he received the protection of the Zīrid amīr Ḥabbūs b. Māksan (r. 410–29/10…

Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī Ibn Abī l-Rijāl al-Kātib al-Shaybānī (d. after 429/1037–8), born in Tāhart and educated in al-Qayrawān, was an important politician and astrologer who served two Zīrid rulers of Ifrīqiya, Bādīs b. al-Manṣūr (r. 386–406/996–1016) and al-Muʿizz b. Bādīs (r. 406–54/1016–62). He was in charge of the chancery of Bādīs and was the tutor of young al-Muʿizz. He also served as astrologer to al-Muʿizz. His Kitāb al-bāriʿ fī aḥkām al-nujūm (“The outstanding book on the judgement of stars”) contains incomplete information about the horoscopes he cast of the Kalbī amīr of Sicily,…

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Yaḥyā l-Naqqāsh al-Tujībī (d. 493/1100), called Ibn al-Zarqālluh, was the most important western Islamic astronomer of the Middle Ages. He was known also as Walad al-Zarqiyāl (whence the Hispanicised form Azarquiel), al-Zarqālluh, al-Zarqāl, and Ibn Zarqāl. Al-Zarqālī (sometimes al-Zarqānī) and al-Zarqāla appear to be classicised Eastern forms. The name is occasionally written also as al-Zarqāllu and Zarqallu. He was an instrument maker in Toledo and worked, after 440/1048–9, for the scholar and historian Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī (d. 462/107…

Abū ʿAbdallāh (or Abū Bakr) Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Muʿādh al-Shaʿbānī al-Jayyānī, known as Ibn Muʿādh al-Jayyānī (d. Dhū l-Ḥijja 485/January 1093), was an astronomer and mathematician from Jayyān (Jaén) in al-Andalus. He lived in that city, where he was a faqīh (jurisprudent) and qāḍī (judge) and a member of a well-known family of legal scholars. There is no evidence that he ever travelled to the East, although some of his works (Villuendas, Trigonometría) bear witness to his knowledge of Eastern sources unknown in al-Andalus. Six works of his are extant: 1. Maqāla fī sharḥ a…

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. Ḥabīb b. Samura b. Jundab al-Fazārī (Ibn al-Nadīm, 2:273; Ibn al-Qifṭī, 77) or Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm (Ibn al-Qifṭī, 270) (fl. second half of the second/eighth century), was an astronomer and representative of the earliest stage in the history of Arab astronomy. There is no scholarly agreement about whether the two names correspond to two different persons (father and son?) or only one (Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm). The latter is the hypothesis assumed in this article, following the opinion of Nallino ( ʿIlm al-falak, 156–68; Raccolta, 209–15) and Pingree and Sezgin (122–4). Al…

Abū Muḥammad Jābir b. Aflaḥ al-Ishbīlī or al-Andalusī was a mathematician and theoretical astronomer who lived most likely in Seville during the first half of the sixth/twelfth century. Virtually nothing is known about his life, but his chronology seems well established due to the fact that: 1) Maimonides (d. 601/1204; Guide, 268–9) says that he was acquainted with Jābir’s son; 2) According to Ibn al-Qifṭī (d. 645/1248), Joseph ben Yehudah ben Shamʿūn (d. 623/1226) brought Jābir’s Iṣlāḥ al-Majisṭī (“Revision of the Almagest”) from Ceuta to al-Fusṭāṭ before 583/1187, where he…

Abū Maḥmūd Ḥāmid b. al-Khiḍr al-Khujandī (d. c.390/1000) was an important astronomer and mathematician from Khujand, in Transoxania (now in Tajikistan), who lived in Rayy, in north-central Iran, under the protection of the Būyid ruler Fakhr al-Dawla (r. 366–87/977–997). He wrote on geometry and arithmetic and was interested in solving third-degree equations using geometrical methods, proving, in an imperfect way, that “the sum of two cubic numbers is not a cubic number,” that is, that the equation x3 + y3 = z3 has no rational solution. According to Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 6…

Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. ʿAbdallāh Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib al-Marwazī (fl. third/ninth century) was a brilliant mathematician (the name al-Ḥāsib means “the calculator”) and astronomer active during the period of the great blossoming of the sciences under the patronage of the ʿAbbāsids. Born in Merv, he lived in Baghdad, Damascus, and Samarrāʾ (sometime after the founding of the city in 221/836) during the reigns of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs al-Maʾmūn (198–218/813–33) and al-Muʿtaṣim (218–27/833–42). According to Ibn al-Nadīm ( al-Fihrist, 275), he lived to an age of more than a hundred, …