| From: Thomas Hockey et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, Springer Reference. New York: Springer, 2007, pp. 460-461 |
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Courtesy of 
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Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar
Sonja Brentjes
Flourished Baghdad, (Iraq),
786–830
We know
next to nothing about Ḥajjāj's personal life, his
family, his friends, or his training; we do know that he was one of the most
influential translators of the late 8th and early 9th centuries in Baghdad,
then the capital of the ʿAbbāsid
Empire.
Ḥajjāj translated Ptolemy's
Megále Sýntaxis (later known as the Almagest) and Euclid's Elements.
In the early 9th century, he translated the Elements, apparently on
the basis of a single Greek manuscript, into Arabic for Yaḥyā ibn Khālid (died:
805), the Vizier of Caliph Hārūn
al‐Rashīd. In the 820s, Ḥajjāj
revised his translation and produced for the then ruling ʿAbbāsid
Caliph Maʾmūn (reigned: 813–833)
a new version described as more sophisticated than his original translation.
When and for whom he translated the Almagest is unknown. Two manuscripts
of Ḥajjāj's translation of Ptolemy's
major work are today extant, one of them complete, the second containing only
Books I–IV.
Ḥajjāj's translations exercised
a long‐lasting influence upon the community of Arabic, Persian, Hebrew,
and Latin students of Ptolemy's and Euclid's books. It can be detected in
the manuscripts representing the second major tradition in the Arabic transmission
of the Almagest and the Elements (and in that of its later offspring
in Latin and Hebrew). This second tradition was started by Isḥāq
ibn Ḥunayn's translations
of the Almagest and the Elements into Arabic and continued with
Thābit ibn Qurra's edition of the two translations. Several of the ten manuscripts
of the Arabic Almagest extant today and representing this tradition
contain some portions of the Ḥajjāj
translation, in particular the star catalog. Manuscripts of both traditions,
including manuscripts having parts of each, were studied in Andalusia (Spain),
in northern Africa, the central lands of the Middle East, Central Asia, and
India. Important scholars such as Abū ʿAlī
ibn Sīnā (in Central Asia and Iran;), Jābir
ibn Aflaḥ (in al‐Andalus), and Naṣīr
al‐Dīn al‐Ṭūsī (in Iran) knew and worked
with manuscripts of both traditions and commented, sometimes critically, upon
them. In the 12th century, Gerard
of Cremona translated the Almagest in Toledo from Arabic into
Latin using manuscripts representing the two Arabic traditions. Books I–IX
of his translation are based on the work of Ḥajjāj except for the star catalog
in the books VII.5–VIII.1, which represents a text mixing the two Arabic traditions.
The remaining three books of Gerard's translation are derived from the work
of Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn and Thābit ibn Qurra (Ptolemäus, Vol. 2, p. 3, 1990).
Selected References
Ibn
al‐Nadīm (1970). The Fihrist of al‐Nadīm: A Tenth‐Century
Survey of Muslim Culture, edited and translated by Bayard Dodge. 2 Vols.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Kunitzsch, Paul (1974). Der Almagest: Die Syntaxis
Mathematica des Claudius Ptolemaüs in arabisch‐lateinischer Überlieferung.
Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
——— (2001). “A Hitherto
Unknown Arabic Manuscript of the Almagest.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte
der Arabisch‐Islamischen Wissenschaften 14: 31–37.
Lorch, Richard P. (1975). “The Astronomy of Jābir ibn Aflaḥ.”
Centaurus 19: 85–107.
Ptolemäus, Claudius (1986–1991). Der Sternkatalog des
Almagest: Die arabisch‐mittelalterliche Tradition, edited by
Paul Kunitzsch. 3 Vols. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.