The House of Wisdom (37 page)

1
. Ibn al-Nadim,
The Fihrist of al~Nadim
, trans. and ed. Bayard Dodge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 650.

2
. Pier Giovanni Donini,
Arab Travelers and Geographers
(London: Immel, 1991), 21.

3
. Al-Yaqubi, Le Pays, trans. Gaston Wiet (Cairo: L’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1937), 10.

4
. Dimitri Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco~Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society
(London: Routledge, 1998), 19.

5
. Ibid., 13–14.

6
. Atiya,
Crusade
, 209 (see Prologue, n. 8).

7
. Jonathan Bloom,
Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 48–51. On the city’s first paper factory, see Gaston Wiet,
Baghdad: Metropolis of the Abbasid Caliphate
, trans. Seymour Feiler (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 70.

8
. Johannes Pedersen,
The Arabic Book
, trans. Geoffrey French (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 116–17.

9
. Ibid., 115–16.

10
. Ruth S. Mackensen, “Four Great Libraries of Medieval Baghdad,”
Library Quarterly
2(1932): 280.

11
. Pedersen,
Arabic Book
, 52.

12
. Saleh Ahmad El-Ali, “The Foundation of Baghdad,” in
The Islamic City
, ed. A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1970), 89–90.

13
. Guy Le Strange,
Baghdad During the Abbasid Caliphate
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 17.

14
. El-Ali, “Foundation of Baghdad,” 93–94.

15
. Ibid., 94.

16
. Sayyid Maqbal Ahmad,
A History of Arab-Islamic Geography
(Amman: Al al-Bayt University, 1995), 25.

17
. Michael Cooperson,
Al Ma’mun
(Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), 19–21.

18
. Al-Yaqubi,
Le Pays
, 4.

19
. Ibid., 5–6.

20
. Quoted in El-Ali, “Foundation of Baghdad,” 96–97.

21
. Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture
, 33–46.

22
. Ibid., 43.

23
. Ibn Khaldun,
The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History
, trans. and ed. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 3: 113–14.

24
. Said al-Andalusi,
Science in the Medieval World: “Book of the Categories of Nations
,” trans. and ed. Semaan I. Salem and Alok Kumar (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), 44.

25
. Al-Masudi,
The Meadows of Gold
, trans. and ed. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London: Kegan Paul, 1989), 388.

26
. Aydin Sayili,
The Observatory in Islam
(Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1960), 53.

27
. Hunayn ibn Ishaq,
Risalat
, quoted in Max Meyerhof, “New Light on Hunain ibn Ishaq and His Period,” Isis8, no. 4 (1926): 690.

28
. Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture
, 2.

29
. For a detailed discussion of the profound and lasting impact of this competition, see Saliba,
Islamic Science
, 27–72 (see Prologue, n. 12).

30
. Pedersen,
Arabic Book
, 21–22.

31
. Al-Biruni,
The Determination of the Coordinates of Cities: Al~Biruni’s
Tahid al-Amakin, trans. and ed. Jamil Ali (Beirut: Centennial Publications, 1967), 191.

32
. Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture
, 137.

33
. J. H. Kramers, “The Language of the Koran,” in
Analecta Orientalia
, vol. 2 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1954), 164–65.

34
. Gutas, Greek
Thought, Arabic Culture
, 65–69.

35
. Pedersen,
Arabic Book
, 28.

36
. Al-Masudi, quoted in Cooperson,
Al Ma’mun
, 22.

37
. Ibn al-Nadim,
Fihrist of al-Nadim
, 254.

38
. Abu Qurra, quoted in Mark N. Swanson, “The Christian al-Mamun Tradition,” in
Christians at the Heart of Islamic Rule
, ed. David Thomas (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 2003), 67.

39
. Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture
, 108–09.

40
. Lynn Thorndike, “The True Place of Astrology in the History of Science,”
Isis
46, no. 145 (1955): 277.

41
. Abu-Sahl,
Kitab an-Nahmutan
, quoted in Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture
, 46.

42
. Cooperson,
Al Ma’mun
, I—4 and 111–12.

43
. Sayili,
Observatory in Islam
, 4–7.

44
. Habash al-Hasib, quoted in David A. King, “Too Many Cooks … A Newly-Rediscovered Account of the First Islamic Geodetic Measurements,”
Suhayl—Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation
1 (2000): 217.

45
. Al-Biruni,
Determination of the Coordinates
, 183.

46
. Bernard R. Goldstein, “The Making of Astronomy in Early Islam,”
Nuncius: Annali di Storia Delia Scienza
1 (1986): 87.

47
. Habash al-Hasib, quoted in Sayili,
Observatory in Islam
, 56–57.

48
. Sayili,
Observatory in Islam
, 57.

49
. Arin was the Arab designation, apparently based on a faulty transliteration of Hindu texts. It is associated with the Indian city of Ujjain, in Madhya Pradesh state.

50
.
Ibn al-Muthanna”s Commentary on the Astronomical Tables of al~Khwarizmi
, trans. and ed. Bernard R. Goldstein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967), 3–4.

51
. D. A. King and J. Samso, “Astronomical Handbooks and Tables from the Islamic World (750–1900): An Interim Report,”
Suhayl—Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation
2(2001): 31.

52
. David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski,
The Hindu-Arabic Numerals
(Boston: Ginn and Co., 1911), 6.

53
. Georges Ifrah,
The Universal History of Numbers: From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer
, trans. David Bellos, E. F. Harding, Sophie Wood, and Ian Monk (New York: John Wiley, 2000), 529.

54
. Owen Gingerich, “Islamic Astronomy,”
Scientific American
254 (April 1986): 70A.

55
.
Ibn al-Muthanna
, Goldstein, 4.

56
. Ibn al-Nadim,
Fihrist of al-Nadim
, 625.

57
. King and Samsó, “Astronomical Handbooks and Tables,” 14.

58
. Bernard R. Goldstein and David Pingree, “The Astronomical Tables of al-Khwarizmi in a 19th Century Egyptian Text,”
Journal of the American Oriental Society
98, no. 1 (1978): 96–99.

59
. Smith and Karpinski,
Hindu-Arabic Numerals
, 92.

60
. Al-Khwarizmi,
Kitab al jam wa’l tafriq bi hisab al hind
, quoted in Ifrah,
Universal History of Numbers
, 364–65.

61
. J. J. Berggren,
Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam
(New York: Springer-Verlag, 2003), 7.

62
. Al-Khwarizmi,
The Algebra of Mohammad ben Musa
, trans. and ed. Frederic Rosen (Hildesheim, Germany: George Olms Verlag, 1986), 3.

63
. Berggren,
Episodes in the Mathematics
, 63–64.

64
. Ibid., 7.

65
. Roshdi Rashed,
The Development of Arabic Mathematics: Between Arithmetic and Algebra
, trans. A. F. W. Armstrong (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 14.

66
. O. Neugebauer, “The Astronomical Tables of Al-Khwarizmi,”
Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskaber Historisk-Filosofiske Skrifter
4, no. 2(1962): 46.

67
. Ibid., 23.

68
. James Evans,
The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 23–34.

69
. Goldstein, “The Making of Astronomy,” 86–87.

70
. Gutas,
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture
, 75–85.

71
. Ibid., 88.

72
. Al-Masudi,
Muruj al~dahab
, quoted in Gutas, Greek
Thought, Arabic Culture
, 89.

73
. Ibn al-Nadim,
Fihrist of al~Nadim
, 583–84.

Chapter 4: Mapping the World

1
. Translations from the Koran are from Marmaduke Pickthall,
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1909). Pickthall’s somewhat archaic use of English has on occasion been modernized.

2
. J. H. Kramers,
Analecta Orientalia: Posthumous Writings and Selected Minor Works
(Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1954), vol. 2, 235–38.

3
. Alfred T. Welch, “Muhammad: Life of the Prophet,”
Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), vol. 3, 159.

4
. W. Montgomery Watt,
Muhammad at Medina
(London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 195.

5
. Ibid., 198–201.

6
. Watt,
Muhammad at Medina
, 205.

7
. Ibid., 202.

8
. Ibn Yunis, from a prose translation of a poem in David A. King, In
Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization
(Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 2004), 215. King notes that the poem has been attributed to both Ibn Yunis and the famous legal scholar al-Shafi, but he prefers the former based on an analysis of its contents.

9
. King,
In Synchrony
, 547.

10
. Ibid., xvii.

11
. Ibn al-Ukhuwwa,
Ma’alim al-qurba
, quoted in King,
In Synchrony
, 637–38.

12
. Zayn al-Din al-Dimyati, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS March 592, quoted in David A. King and Richard P. Lorch, “Qibla Charts, Qibla Maps, and Related Instruments,” in The
History of Cartography
, vol.2, bk.I,
Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies
, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 190.

13
. King and Lorch, “Qibla Charts, Qibla Maps,” 189, n. 3.

14
. A. J. Wensinck, “Kibla,” in
The Encyclopedia of Islam
, vol. 5 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1960), 87.

15
. Ibid., 189–93.

16
. David A. King, “The Sacred Direction in Islam: A Study of the Interaction of Religion and Science in the Middle Ages,”
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
10 (1985): 321.

17
. Suliman Bashear, “Qibla Musharriqa and Early Muslim Prayer in Churches,”
The Muslim World
81, no. 3–4 (1991): 268.

18
. A. J. Wensinck, “Kibla,” in
The Encyclopedia of Islam
, vol. 5 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1960), 87.

19
. David A. King,
Astronomy in the Service of Islam
(Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1993), 257.

20
. Carl Schoy, “The Geography of the Muslims of the Middle Ages,”
Geographical Review
14, no. 2 (1924): 261.

21
. Fuat Sezgin,
Mathematical Geography and Cartography in Islam and Their Continuation on the Occident
(Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 2005), 1: 159–60.

22
. Peter J. Lu and Paul K. Steinhardt, “Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture,”
Science
315 (2007): 1106.

23
. Donald R. Hill, “Arabic Fine Technology and Its Influence on European Mechanical Engineering,” in
Arab Influence
, Agius and Hitchcock, 29–30 (see chap. 1, n. 42).

24
. Ibid., 27.

25
. A. Jon Kimerling, “Cartographic Methods for Determining the Qibla,”
Journal of Geography
101 (2002): 20–22.

26
. Al-Masudi,
Muruj al-dahab
quoted in Donini,
Arab Travelers and Geographers
, 24 (see chap. 3, n. 2).

27
. Donini,
Arab Travelers and Geographers
, 30.

28
. Ibid., 31.

29
. Al-Masudi,
Kitab al-Tanbih wa’l-israf
, quoted in Sezgin,
Mathematical Geography
, 78.