Alfraganus
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Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani (Arabic: أبو العبّاس أحمد بن محمد بن كثير الفرغاني Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Kathīr, and known as Alfraganus in the West) was a Persian astronomer and one of the famous astronomers in 9th century.
He was involved in the measurement of the diameter of the Earth together with a team of scientists under the patronage of al-Ma'mūn in Baghdad. His textbook Elements of astronomy on the celestial motions, written about 833, was a competent descriptive summary of Ptolemy's Almagest. It was translated into Latin in the twelfth century and remained very popular in Europe until the time of Regiomontanus. In the seventeenth century the Dutch orientalist Jacob Golius published the Arabic text on the basis of a manuscript he had acquired in the Near East, with a new Latin translation and extensive notes.
Later he moved to Cairo, where he composed a very important treatise on the astrolabe around 856. There he also supervised the construction of the large Nilometer on the island of al-Rawda (in Old Cairo) in the year 861.
The Alfraganus crater on the Moon was named after him.
[edit] See also
[edit] Bibliography
- Dictionary of Scientific Biography, s.v.
- Jacobus Golius (ed.), كتاب محمد بن كثير الفرغاني في الحركات السماوية وجوامع علم النجوم، بتفسير الشيخ الفاضل يعقوب غوليوس / Muhammedis Fil. Ketiri Ferganensis, qui vulgo Alfraganus dicitur, Elementa astronomica, Arabicè & Latinè. Cum notis ad res exoticas sive Orientales, quae in iis occurrunt, Amsterdam 1669; Reprint Frankfurt 1986 and 1997.
- El-Fergânî, The Elements of Astronomy, textual analysis, translation into Turkish, critical edition & facsimile by Yavuz Unat, edited by Şinasi Tekin & Gönül Alpay Tekin, Harvard University 1998.
- Richard Lorch (ed.), Al-Farghānī on the Astrolabe. Arabic text edited with translation and commentary, Stuttgart, 2005, ISBN 3-515-08713-3.
