From: Thomas Hockey et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, Springer Reference. New York: Springer, 2007, pp. 591-592

Courtesy of http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_716

Jawharī: al‐ʿAbbās ibn Saʿīd al‐Jawharī

Marvin Bolt

Flourished  Baghdad, (Iraq), 830

Jawharī made solar, lunar, and planetary observations in Baghdad from 829 to 830, the data of which appeared in the astronomical handbook with tables that is sometimes referred to as Kitāb al‐Zīj. Most likely, this is a reference to the Mumtaḥan zīj, which was apparently jointly authored by several astronomers at the court of the ʿAbbāsid caliph Maʾmūn. Charged by the caliph with the task of providing appropriate instruments for the year‐long series of astronomical observations at Damascus in 832–833, Jawharī selected Khālid ibn ʿAbd al‐Malik al‐Marwarrūdhī to construct them. Jawharī also contributed to the accuracy of the calculated solar and lunar data; these results also appeared in the Mumtaḥan zīj. His astronomical writings were later consulted by Shams al‐Dīn al‐Samarqandī, a contemporary of Naṣīr al‐Dīn al‐Ṭūsī. In his work on the parallels postulate of Euclid, Ṭūsī noted the failure of Jawharī to prove the parallels postulate in the latter's commentary on Euclid's Elements; this treatise of Jawharī survives only in fragmentary references.

Selected References

De Young, Gregg (1997). “Al‐Jawharī's additions to Book V of Euclid's Elements.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch‐Islamischen Wissenschaften 11: 153–178.

Kennedy, E. S. (1956). “A Survey of Islamic Astronomical Tables.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 46, pt. 2: 121–177, esp. 128, 136. (Reprint, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1989. An important list, with excellent introduction to the topic of zījes.)

Rosenfeld, B. A. and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu (2003). Mathematicians, Astronomers, and Other Scholars of Islamic Civilization and Their Works (7th–19th c.). Istanbul: IRCICA, pp. 26–27.

Sabra, A. I. (1973). “Al‐Jawharī.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. 7, pp. 79–80. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Sayılı, Aydın (1960). The Observatory in Islam. Ankara: Turkish Historical Society. (See chap. 2, “Al Mamûn's Observatory Building Activity,” pp. 50–87, for a valuable discussion, beginning with a thorough analysis of early Islamic astronomical observations.)