15 - Astronomy

Summary

During the millennium which followed the introduction of mathematical astronomy from Indian, Sasanid and Hellenistic sources to the vigorous cultural scene of ʿAbbasid Iraq in the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries, Muslim astronomers compiled a remarkably rich and varied corpus of literature relating to their subject. Some of this literature survives in about 10,000 manuscript volumes preserved in the libraries of southwestern Asia, north Africa, Europe and the United States, and during the past 200 years a very small number of scholars has turned its attention to a fraction of this surviving material. Catalogues of varying quality exist for some library collections, but there are many important collections of scientific manuscripts which are not yet catalogued at all. Lists of medieval authors, titles of their works and available manuscripts thereof, have been prepared from these catalogues by H. Suter, C. Brockelmann, C. A. Storey and F. Sezgin.

No classification of the Islamic astronomical literature exists in the modern literature, and besides, the scope of this literature has only become known during the past few decades. The present chapter represents an attempt to fill this gap, and to discuss the different categories of Islamic astronomical literature, the variety of which reflects the keen interest of Muslim scholars in astronomy for over a millennium. Very little of the Islamic material was transmitted to Europe in the medieval period, and that which was transmitted was hardly representative of the whole.