Abū Ja'far al-Khāzin

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Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Hasan Khazini (Persian : ابوجعفر خازن خراسانی‎; 900–971), also called Al-Khazin, was an Iranian [1] Muslim astronomer and mathematician from Khorasan. He worked on both astronomy and number theory.

Persian language Western Iranian language

Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and some other regions which historically were Persianate societies and considered part of Greater Iran. It is written right to left in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script.

Mathematics in medieval Islam the body of mathematics preserved and advanced under the Islamic civilization between circa 622 and 1600

Mathematics during the Golden Age of Islam, especially during the 9th and 10th centuries, was built on Greek mathematics and Indian mathematics. Important progress was made, such as the full development of the decimal place-value system to include decimal fractions, the first systematised study of algebra, and advances in geometry and trigonometry.

Al-Khazin was one of the scientists brought to the court in Ray, Iran by the ruler of the Buyid dynasty, Adhad ad-Dowleh, who ruled from 949 to 983 AD. In 959/960 Khazini was required by the Vizier of Ray, who was appointed by ad-Dowleh, to measure the obliquity of the ecliptic.

Vizier high-ranking political advisor or minister

A vizier is a high-ranking political advisor or minister. The Abbasid caliphs gave the title wazir to a minister formerly called katib (secretary), who was at first merely a helper but afterwards became the representative and successor of the dapir of the Sassanian kings.

Ecliptic apparent path of the Sun on the celestial sphere

The ecliptic is the mean plane of the apparent path in the Earth's sky that the Sun follows over the course of one year; it is the basis of the ecliptic coordinate system. This plane of reference is coplanar with Earth's orbit around the Sun. The ecliptic is not normally noticeable from Earth's surface because the planet's rotation carries the observer through the daily cycles of sunrise and sunset, which obscure the Sun's apparent motion against the background of stars during the year.

One of Al-Khazin's works Zij al-Safa'ih ("Tables of the disks of the astrolabe") was described by his successors[ who? ] as the best work in the field and they make many references to it. The work describes some astronomical instruments, in particular an astrolabe fitted with plates inscribed with tables and a commentary on the use of these. A copy of this instrument was made, but it vanished in Germany at the time of World War II. A photograph of this copy was taken and examined in D.A. King's New light on the Zij al-Safa'ih of Abu Ja'far al-Khazin, Centaurus 23 (2) (1979/80), 105-117.

A zīj is an Islamic astronomical book that tabulates parameters used for astronomical calculations of the positions of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets.

Astrolabe astronomical instrument

An astrolabe is an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers and navigators to measure the altitude above the horizon of a celestial body, day or night. It can be used to identify stars or planets, to determine local latitude given local time, to survey, or to triangulate. It was used in classical antiquity, the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages and the Age of Discovery for all these purposes.

Germany Federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north, and the Alps to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.

Al-Khazin also wrote a commentary on Ptolemy's Almagest in which he gives nineteen propositions relating to statements by Ptolemy. He proposed a different solar model from Ptolemy's.

Ptolemy 2nd-century Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer

Claudius Ptolemy was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt, wrote in Koine Greek, and held Roman citizenship. The 14th-century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes gave his birthplace as the prominent Greek city Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid. This attestation is quite late, however, and, according to Gerald Toomer, the translator of his Almagest into English, there is no reason to suppose he ever lived anywhere other than Alexandria. He died there around AD 168.

<i>Almagest</i> astronomical treatise

The Almagest is a 2nd-century Greek-language mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Claudius Ptolemy. One of the most influential scientific texts of all time, its geocentric model was accepted for more than 1200 years from its origin in Hellenistic Alexandria, in the medieval Byzantine and Islamic worlds, and in Western Europe through the Middle Ages and early Renaissance until Copernicus.

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Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani Persian astronomer

Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Kathīr al-Farghānī. (800/805-870) also known as Alfraganus in the West, was an astronomer in the Abbasid court in Baghdad, and one of the most famous astronomers in the 9th century. The lunar crater Alfraganus is named after him.

Abu al-Wafa Buzjani Persian mathematician and astronomer

Abū al-Wafāʾ, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ismāʿīl ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Būzjānī or Abū al-Wafā Būzhjānī was a Persian mathematician and astronomer who worked in Baghdad. He made important innovations in spherical trigonometry, and his work on arithmetics for businessmen contains the first instance of using negative numbers in a medieval Islamic text.

Abu Maʿshar 9th-century Persian astrologer, astronomer, and Islamic philosopher

Abu Maʿshar, Latinized as Albumasar, was an early Persian Muslim astrologer, thought to be the greatest astrologer of the Abbasid court in Baghdad. While he was not a major innovator, his practical manuals for training astrologers profoundly influenced Muslim intellectual history and, through translations, that of western Europe and Byzantium.

Abu Mahmud Hamid ibn Khidr Khojandi was a Central Asian astronomer and mathematician who lived in the late 10th century and helped build an observatory, near the city of Ray, in Iran. He was born in Khujand; a bronze bust of the astronomer is present in a park in modern-day Khujand, now part of Tajikistan.

Abu-Abdullah Muhammad ibn Īsa Māhānī was a Persian Muslim mathematician and astronomer born in Mahan, and active in Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate. His known mathematical works included his commentaries on Euclid's Elements, Archimedes' On the Sphere and Cylinder and Menelaus' Sphaerica, as well as two independent treatises. He unsuccessfully tried to solve a problem posed by Archimedes of cutting a sphere into two volumes of a given ratio, which was later solved by 10th century mathematician Abū Ja'far al-Khāzin. His only known surviving work on astronomy was on the calculation of azimuths. He was also known to make astronomical observations, and claimed his estimates of the start times of three consecutive lunar eclipses were accurate to within half an hour.

Abū’l-‘Abbās al-Faḍl ibn Ḥātim al-Nairīzī was a Persian mathematician and astronomer from Nayriz, Fars Province, Iran.

Banū Mūsā Persian brothers, mathematicians and astronomers

The Banū Mūsā brothers, namely Abū Jaʿfar, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir, Abū al‐Qāsim, Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir and Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir, were three 9th-century Persian scholars who lived and worked in Baghdad. They are known for their Book of Ingenious Devices on automata and mechanical devices. Another important work of theirs is the Book on the Measurement of Plane and Spherical Figures, a foundational work on geometry that was frequently quoted by both Islamic and European mathematicians.

Zīj-i Īlkhānī or Ilkhanic Tables is a Zij book with astronomical tables of planetary movements. It was compiled by the Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in collaboration with his research team of astronomers at the Maragha observatory. It was written in Persian and later translated into Arabic.

Ibn Babawayh Buyid shiite scholar

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn 'Ali ibn Babawayh al-Qummi, commonly referred to as Ibn Babawayh or al-Shaykh al-Saduq was a Persian Shi'ite Islamic scholar whose work, entitled Man la yahduruhu al-Faqih, forms part of The Four Books of the Shi'ite Hadith collection.

Abū al-Fath Abd al-Rahman Mansūr al-Khāzini or simply al-Khāzini was an astronomer of Greek origin from Seljuk Persia. His astronomical tables written under the patronage of Sultan Sanjar is considered to be one of the major works in mathematical astronomy of the medieval period. He provided the positions of fixed stars, and for oblique ascensions and time-equations for the latitude of Marv in which he was based. He also wrote extensively on various calendrical systems and on the various manipulations of the calendars. He was the author of an encyclopedia on scales and water-balances.

Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Uthman was the second of The Four Deputies after death of Uthman ibn Sa’id al-Asadi, his father and the first deputy, in Twelver Shia Islam, who appointed as the agent and deputy of the twelfth and final Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, while he was in the Minor Occultation. He was Muhammad al-Mahdi's deputy until from 257 AH until his death in 304 0r 305 AH. He appointed after death of the first deputy. Abul Qasim Husayn ibn Ruh al-Nawbakhti was appointed as the third deputy of Muhammad al-Mahdi after the death of Ibn Uthman.

Abu Jafar Ahmad ibn Yusuf ibn al‐Kammad was a Muslim Arab astronomer born in Seville, Al-Andalus. He is known to have been educated in Cordoba by the students of Al-Zarqali. His works such as al Kawr ala al dawr, al Amad ala al abad, and al Muqtabas, which is a compilation of the two previous Zij, made him famous not only on the Iberian peninsula but across North Africa, and specifically Tunisia, where the astronomer Ibn Ishaq al-Tunisi wrote commentaries on his works.

Abu al‐Qasim Ahmad ibn Abd Allah ibn Umar al‐Ghafiqī ibn al-Saffar al‐Andalusi, also known as Ibn al-Saffar, was a Spanish-Arab astronomer in Al-Andalus. He worked at the school founded by his colleague Al-Majriti in Córdoba. His best-known work was a treatise on the astrolabe, a text that was in active use until the 15th century and influenced the work of Kepler. He also wrote a commentary on the Zij al-Sindhind, and measured the coordinates of Mecca.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi Persian astronomer

Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tūsī, better known as Nasir al-Din Tusi, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. He is often considered the creator of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right. He was a Twelver Shia Muslim. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars.

Muhammad ibn Mikal was an Iranian nobleman from the Mikalid family, who served as a military commander of the Tahirid dynasty. He was the son of Mikal, a nobleman who had left Iraq and settled in Khurasan, and could trace his descent back to the Sogdian ruler Divashtich. Muhammad also had a brother named Shah ibn Mikal, who, during his early career, along with Muhammad, played an important role under the Tahirid ruler Abdallah ibn Tahir al-Khurasani. In 864, the Alid Hasan ibn Zayd conquered Tabaristan from the Tahirids, while another Alid named Muhammad ibn Ja'far ibn al-Hasan expelled the Tahirid governor of Ray, and captured the city. The Tahirid ruler Muhammad ibn Tahir shortly sent an army from Khurasan under Muhammad ibn Mikal, who managed to recapture the city and capture Muhammad ibn Ja'far. Hasan, however, quickly made a counter-attack under his Dailamite general Wajin, who managed to rout the army of Muhammad ibn Mikal, and kill the latter.

References

  1. ↑ Selin, Helaine (2008). Encyclopaedia of the history of science, technology, and medicine in non-western cultures. Berlin New York: Springer. p. 275. ISBN   978-1-4020-4960-6. A newly discovered manuscript (not yet available for research) contains a treatise by the tenth century Iranian astronomer Abū Ja˓far al-Khāzin describing an equatorium called Zīj al-Safāīh. (the Zīj of Plates).

Edmund Frederick Robertson is a Professor emeritus of pure mathematics at the University of St Andrews.

The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive is a website maintained by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson and hosted by the University of St Andrews in Scotland. It contains detailed biographies on many historical and contemporary mathematicians, as well as information on famous curves and various topics in the history of mathematics.

University of St Andrews university in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland

The University of St Andrews is a British public university in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. It is the oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and the third oldest university in the English-speaking world. St Andrews was founded between 1410 and 1413, when the Avignon Antipope Benedict XIII issued a papal bull to a small founding group of Augustinian clergy.

International Standard Book Number Unique numeric book identifier

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.

Yvonne Dold-Samplonius Dutch mathematician, historian of mathematics and historian (1937-2014)

Yvonne Dold-Samplonius was a Dutch mathematician and historian who specialized in the history of Islamic mathematics during the Middle age. She was particularly interested in the mathematical methods used by Islamic architects and builders of the Middle Ages for measurements of volumes and measurements of religious buildings or in the design of muqarnas.

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