Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:48:48.427Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Science and Mithāl: Demonstrations in Arabic and Persian Scientific Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Elaheh Kheirandish
Elaheh Kheirandish*
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
*
E-mail: kheirand@fas.harvard.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Addressing the Arabic and Persian scientific traditions in eastern Islamic lands, this study focuses on the nature and place of demonstrations in optics and mechanics, sub-disciplines of geometry. A focus on the comparative context of demonstrations facilitates clearer understanding of local coordinates that affected the development of these fields, which are shown to have had distinct, and sometimes opposite, cases of transmission and application in Islamic and European lands. Sample demonstrations are presented in an appendix to highlight the concept and terminology of “mithāl” to identify shifts from geometrical to experimental methods in the case of optics, and from physical productions to model duplications in the case of mechanics.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 4: Sciences, Crafts, and the Production of Knowledge: Iran and Eastern Islamic Lands (ca. 184–1153 AH/800–1740 CE) , September 2008 , pp. 465 - 489
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Sabra, A. I., “Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence,” Isis, 87 (1996): 654–670CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saliba, George, “Persian Scientists in the Islamic World: Astronomy from Marâgha to Samarqand,” in The Persian Presence in the Islamic World, ed. by Hovannisian, Richard G. and Sabagh, George (Cambridge, 1998), 126–146Google Scholar.

2 “Situating Arabic Science,” 654–655, states that “All history is local, and the history of science is no exception … All history of science must be contextual, because all historical events are local.” “Persian Scientists in the Islamic World” explains that linguistically “it will be absurd to speak of the production of such famous encyclopedic scientists … who wrote almost exclusively in Arabic, and very little in Persian, if at all;” ethnically, “the history of Persian science becomes totally chaotic” in the light of various figures “hailing from what is now Persia and producing their scientific works in Baghdad,” and thematically, it is difficult to say there is “an indigenous Persian scientific production” independent of Arabic.

3 Charette, Françoise, “The Locales of Islamic Astronomical Instrumentation,” History of Science, 44 (2006): 123–138CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Gavroglu, Kostas and Renn, Jürgen, eds., Positioning the History of Science (Dordrecht, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The choice for the periods and regions was occasioned by teaching two successive courses: “From Alexandria to Baghdad: Classical Sciences in Islamic Lands,” and “From Baghdad to Isfahan: Classical Sciences in Persian Lands” (Harvard: 2005–08). See also Supplement Exhibit: Windows into Early Science (Spring 2008). The choice for the subjects was provided by conducting parallel projects on the history of optics and mechanics (NSF: 2005–08), as well as a chapter in the Cambridge History of Science volumes: Elaheh Kheirandish, “The Mixed Mathematical Sciences: Optics and Mechanics in the Islamic Middle Ages”, The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 2: The Middle Ages (Cambridge, forthcoming).

6 On the Arabic tradition of Euclid's Elements, see Murdoch, John E., “Euclid: Transmission of the Elements,” DSB, 4 (1971): 438–443Google Scholar, and De Young, Gregg, “The Arabic Version of Euclid's Elements by al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf,” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 15 (2002/2003): 125–164Google Scholar. For the case of Ptolemy's Almagest, see references to the standard literature in Toomer, G. J., “Ptolemy,” DSB, 11 (1975), 186–206Google Scholar, 203; On the Intermediate works, see the classic work of Steinschneider, Moritz, “Die ‘mittleren’ Bücher der Araber und ihre Bearbeiter,” Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik, 10 (1865): 456–498Google Scholar; and Kheiranish, Elaheh, “A Report on Iran's ‘Jewel’ Codices of Ṭūsī's Kutub Mutawasiṭāt,” Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Tusī: philosophe et savant de x111e siècle, ed. Pourjavady, N. and Vesel, Z˘iva (Tehran, 2000), 131–136Google Scholar.

7 Brentjes, Sonja, “On the Persian Transmission of Euclid's Elements,” Les sciences dans la monde iranien, Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran (Tehran, 1998): 73–94Google Scholar; and Ragep, Jamil, “The Persian Context of the Tusi Couple,” Les sciences dans la monde iranien, Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran (Tehran, 1998): 113–130Google Scholar. See also articles by Brentjes and Sarhangi in Part One of this volume.

8 Qurbani, Abu al-Qasim and Shaykhan, Muhammd Ali, Būzjānī-Nāmah (Tehran, 1371/1992)Google Scholar; on the text of the Arabic original, see also Necipoğlu, Gulru, The Topkapı Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture, Topkapı Palace Museum Library MS H. 1956, with an essay on the geometry of muqarnas by al-Asad, M. (Santa Monica, 1995)Google Scholar; Saliba, George, “Artisans and Mathematicians in Medieval Islam,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 119/4 (1999): 637–645CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Özdural, Alpay, “Mathematics and Arts: Connections between Theory and Practice in the Medieval Islamic World,” Historia Mathematica, 27 (2000): 171–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Kheirandish, Elaheh, “Organizing Scientific Knowledge: ‘Mixed’ Sciences in Early Classifications,” Organizing Knowledge: Encyclopaedic Activities in the Pre-Eighteenth Century Muslim World, Agha Khan University (Leiden, Boston, 2006), 135–154Google Scholar, includes details and passages on these and other classification works.

10 Kheirandish, “Mixed Mathematical Sciences.”

11 Kheirandish, Elaheh, “The ‘Fluctuating Fortunes of Scholarship’: A Very Late Review Occasioned by a Fallen Book,” Early Science and Medicine, 11 (2006): 207–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 In verses by the fifth/eleventh century Persian poet and philosopher, Nâir Khusraw: “Har kasî chîzî hamî gûyad zi tîrâ ra'y-i khwîsh, Tâ gumân âyad-t kû Qusāy bin Lûqâ-stî” (Every one in his benighted ignorance, propounds some theory That thou' may'st suppose him to be a ‘Qusā b. Lûqâ’): Browne, E. G., A Literary History of Persia (Cambridge, 1902–)1: 238Google Scholar. See Kheirandish, Elaheh, “Qusṭā b. Lūqā,” in Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (BEA) (New York, 2007), 2: 948–949Google Scholar, and BEA online, for references to sources closer to his own time.

13 Heath, Thomas L., The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1926 [repr. 1956]), vol. I: 129–131Google Scholar; Arabic corresponding terms are from Ya‘qūbī, Ta'rīkh, ed. by M. Th. Houtsma, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1883).

14 Rosenthal, Franz, The Classical Heritage in Islam, trans. by Emile, and Marmorstein, Jenny (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Endress, Gerhard, “The Circle of Al-Kindī: Early Arabic Translations from the Greek and the Rise of Islamic Philosophy,” in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, ed. by Endress, Gerhard and Kruk, Remke (Leiden, 1997)Google Scholar.

15 Elaheh Kheirandish, The Arabic Version of Euclid’s Optics, Edited and Translated with Historical Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols.: Sources in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, 16 (New York, 1999); Kindi on Translation: Rashed, Roshdi, “Greek into Arabic: Transmission and Translation,” in Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy: From the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, ed. by Montgomery, J. E. (Leuven and Dudley, 2006)Google Scholar.

16 Kheirandish, publication in preparation based on two known Arabic manuscripts, recorded by Krause, Max, “Stambuler Handschriften islamischer Mathematiker,” Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik, Astronomie und Physik, 3 (1936): 437–532Google Scholar; there is also one in Hebrew letters, reported by Langermann, Tzvi, “Arabic Writings in Hebrew Manuscripts: A preliminary Relisting,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 6 (1996): 137–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Sabra, A. I., “The Astronomical Origin of Ibn al-Haytham's Concept of Experiment,” Actes XIIe Congrès International d'Histoire des Science (Paris, 1971), 133–136Google Scholar, reprinted in Sabra, A. I., Optics, Astronomy and Logic (Aldershot, 1994), VI: 133–136Google Scholar.

18 Arabic edition and German translation in Nix, L. and Schmidt, W., Herons von Alexandria Mechanik und Katoptrik (Leipzig, 1900)Google Scholar; Arabic edition and French translation, Vaux, Carra de, Heron D'Alexandre:Les Mecaniques ou L'Elevateaur Des Corps Lourd (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar; Drachmann, A. G., The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Copenhagen, 1963), 19–140Google Scholar (tr. passages).

19 Szabó, Árpád, “The Development of Mathematical Demonstration and of the Concept of Evidence,” Scripta Mathematica 27 (1964): 27–139Google Scholar.

20 Saliba, George, “The Function of Mechanical Devices in Medieval Islamic Society,” in Science and Technology in Medieval Society, ed. by Lang, Pamela O., Annals of the New York Academy (New York, 1985), 441: 141–151Google Scholar.

21 Mi‘yâr al-‘uqûl, ed. by Humayi, Jalal al-Din (Tehran, 1331/1952)Google Scholar, cited in Rozhanskaya, (and Levinova), “Statics,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. by Rashed, R., 3 vols. (London, 1996), 2: 614–642Google Scholar, as “Mi‘yâr al-‘aql (The Measure of Mind),” 618 and 633.

22 Blochet, E., Catalogue des Manuscrits Persans de la Bibliotheque Nationale, (Paris, 1912), XCCCXII, no. 803, 73–74Google Scholar, includes reference to the sixteenth century nasta'līq Persian transcription, and the name Petis de la Croix, teacher to the son of Mîr Morteza, the son in law of Shâh Abbâs II, from 1085/1674 to 1087/1676 (references kindly provided by Giuseppina Ferriello).

23 Reference originally given in a lecture by Professor Masoumi-Hamedani Tehran. See also Sabra, A. I., “The Commentary That Saved the Text, The Hazardous Journey of Ibn al-Haytham's Arabic Optics,” Early Science and Medicine, 12 (2007): 117–133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Kheriandish, Elaheh, “The Many Aspects of Appearances: Arabic Optics to 950 AD,” in The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives, ed. by Hogendijk, Jan P. and Sabra, AbdelHamid (Cambridge, 2002): 55–83Google Scholar.

25 Blochet, E., Catalogue des Manuscrits Persans de la Bibliothe`que Nationale (Paris, 1912)Google Scholar.

26 Kheirandish, Elaheh, “Mathematical Sciences through Persian Sources: The Puzzle of Tūsī's Optical Works,” in Sciences, techniques et instruments dans le monde Iranien, Xe-XIXe sie`cle ed. by Pourjavady, N. and Vesel, Z˘., conference proceedings (Tehran, 2004): 197–213Google Scholar.

27 Sabra, “The Commentary That Saved the Text,” 117–133.

28 Ragep, F. J., Naīr al-Dîn al-ūsî's Memoir on Astronomy: al-Tadhkira fi ‘ilm al-hay'a, 2 vols., ed. by Toomer, G. J. (New York, 1993)Google Scholar: includes a useful chronology of ūsî’s life.

29 Sabra, “The Commentary That Saved the Text,” 129.

30 Ragep, F. Jamil and Ragep, Sally P., eds., Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-modern Science Held at the University of Oklahoma (Leiden, 1996)Google Scholar.