“Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ and its Extensive Commentary Tradition: What it indicates about the Teaching of Theoretical Astronomy within Islamic Societies”

Sally Ragep (McGill University)

This paper will discuss Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa, an extremely popular elementary astronomical work on Ptolemaic astronomy, and its extensive commentary tradition. Composed in Arabic in the early 13th century in the region of Khwārizm in Central Asia, a period often considered as one of scientific stagnation, Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ was studied well into the 19th century as a way to provide a general picture of God’s creation. It was also used as a propaedeutic for more advanced astronomical texts. I have identified over 60 commentaries, super commentaries, glosses written to elucidate the base text, and translations into Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew; these derivative works and the original are represented by thousands of extant manuscripts. This long-lived commentary tradition shows, among other things, that even after “European science” came on the scene, Islamic scholars were attempting to seek approaches that could accommodate the older Islamic scientific traditions along with new (jadīd) scientific developments. Moreover, by tracing the influence of Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ and ensuing commentaries, this paper aims to provide strong evidence of a continuity of scientific learning within Islamic societies that sees Islamic science not as mostly a solitary venture, but rather a social endeavor.

“Appeals to Natural Philosophy in Islamic Astronomy: When, Why, and Why Not?”

Scott Trigg (University of Notre Dame)

Islamic astronomers’ limited reliance on Aristotelian natural philosophy has often been discussed in the context of theological objections to philosophy. Granting the existence of particular criticisms of specific philosophical claims, recent work (e.g., Griffel 2009) has shown that even some of the most influential Islamic critiques of philosophy still allowed for the acceptance of a great deal of philosophical concepts and principles. With this in mind, my presentation explores instances in which astronomers invoked natural philosophical principles in support of their claims, and compares the use of these principles in relation to the use of observational evidence. Important topics range from the question of the Earth’s motion or stability and the causes of the motions of the celestial orbs to the notorious equant. Drawing in particular on commentaries by Fathallah al-Shirwani and Ali al-Qushji, two astronomers from Ulugh Beg’s Samarqand observatory who were later associated with the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, this paper highlights the role of theoretical questions and debates in texts and commentaries throughout the 13th-15th c. astronomical enterprise. I suggest that disciplinary boundaries and established hierarchies of knowledge, rather than theological concerns, may account for why astronomers relied on natural philosophy on certain occasions and not others.

“Quantifying Religious Difference: A Thirteenth-Century Mathematical Treatise on the Borders between Arabic Medicine and Latin Moral Philosophy”

Nicholas Jacobson (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Five medical compendia found in manuscripts at the Bodleian Library and Chetham Hospital in Manchester contain the same Latin treatise in which a method is offered explaining how to mathematically quantify natural qualities found in compound substances. Because the treatise was collated with medical texts positively identified to the thirteenth-century arts professor and natural philosopher Roger Bacon, a scholarly consensus emerged that the treatise was also written by Bacon. More recently, Bacon’s authorship has been challenged. These arguments are based mainly upon a fine-grained textual analysis of the document in which scholars concluded that the language did not match Bacon’s authentic medical vocabulary and conceptual framework. In this paper, I argue that the treatise may yet be authentic, especially because the vocabulary, though it does differ from his medical work, in fact, matches other discussions on compound substances found in the natural and moral philosophy of his 1267 Opus Maius. The treatise also is suggestive of contemporaneous Arabic medical theory - specifically that of al-Kindi's and Ibn Rushd's - with which Bacon was familiar, and that he seems to have integrated into his moral philosophy – particularly his treatment of religious difference and social ethnography in book 7 of the Opus Maius. If the treatise is authentic, it offers an important insight into the mathematical processes Bacon used to quantify a civil science in the thirteenth-century that defined religious law in terms of measurable compound virtues analogous to compound pharmaceuticals in medieval Arabic medicine.