Tahrir al-Majisti

13 Dhu’l Qa‘da 813 AH (9 March 1411 AD)

Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī was a prolific philosopher, scientist, and theologian who is often considered to have created the discipline of trigonometry. His 150 compositions and translations include a work on the astrolabe, an Arabic version of Euclid’s Elements, and the Tadhkira fi ‘ilm al-ha’a (Memorandum of Astronomy), in which he corrected inconsistencies in the Ptolemaic system. In this thirteenth-century recension of the Almagest, he updates several of Ptolemy’s methods, substituting later trigonometric equations for Ptolemy’s chord calculations and condensing the calculation of each planet’s equant (the point around which its epicycle revolved) into a single example with variable parameters. Also included in this codex is the 1304-5 commentary on this text by Iranian astronomer Niẓām al-Dīn al-Nīsābūrī. Many of the diagrams in this manuscript are illuminated, with gold leaf often extending beyond the precise outlines of the under-drawings (e.g. fols. 4v, 37r, 168r).

UPenn LJS 392

156r-157v

Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tūsī (aka Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, 1201-1274), Nizam al-Din Hasan al-Nisaburi (Commentator, d. 1328/9), Claudius Ptolemy

Persia (?)

Arabic

Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥasan

Paper

213

264 x 166 mm

17th-century morocco with flap and blind-stamped medallion

Crofton Black, ed., Transformation of Knowledge: Early Manuscripts from the Collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg (London: Paul Holberton, 2006), 54-5.