ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Towards a New Survey of Islamic Astronomical Handbooks with Tables

• In Event: Tabular Practices and the Cross-cultural Exchange of Knowledge in Ancient in Medieval Astronomy 1

English Abstract

Thanks to the 1956 Survey of Islamic Astronomical Tables by Edward S. Kennedy and an update published by David A. King and Julio Samsó in 2001, we know of around two hundred Arabic and Persian astronomical handbooks with tables (zījes), of which approximately one hundred have survived in manuscript form but only a very small number has been published or extensively studied. Since the year 2000 I have worked on and off on a New Zīj Survey, which I hope to finish in the coming four years. In this talk I will give an overview of the Islamic zīj tradition and highlight some interesting new findings, including the identification of important works that had previously hardly been studied, zījes that deviate from the standard Ptolemaic form in which the tables of most zījes were presented, and methods to analyse such tables.

Author

• Benno van Dalen, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities