Sharḥ al-mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʼah

This manuscript contains a commentary on a very popular Arabic astromical text, Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʼah (Epitome of Astronomy). Little is known of this text's author, Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Jighmīnī (d. c. 1221), except that he was a Persian physician who also wrote an epitome on Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine. His astronomical text became very popular in the Arabic-speaking world during the late fourteenth century, and its methods of calculating longitude inspired numerous commentaries, many of which were widely distributed in their own right.

One such commentary was that of Qāḍī Zāda al-Rūmī, a Turkish mathematician and astronomer at the Samarqand Observatory established by Ulugh Beg, the Timurid governor of Transoxiana to whom this text is dedicated. This manuscript, which contains twenty-three astronomical diagrams, was produced during his lifetime; indeed, the copyist claims in a marginal note to have heard one part directly from the author (fol. 59).