Al-Isfizari
Abū Ḥātim al-Muẓaffar al-Isfazārī (Arabic: المظفر الاسفزاري; fl. late 11th or early 12th century) was an Islamic mathematician, astronomer and engineer from Khurasan. According to the historian and geographer Ibn al-Athir and the polymath Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, he worked in the Seljuq observatory of Isfahan. The Persian writer Nezami Aruzi met him in Balkh in (in present‐day Afghanistan) in 1112 or 1113.[1]
Abū Ḥātim al-Muẓaffar al-Isfazārī | |
|---|---|
المظفر الاسفزاري | |
 Manuscript of Irshād dhawī al-cirfān ilā ṣinācat al-qaffān | |
| Academic work | |
| Era | Islamic Golden Age |
| Main interests | Mathematics, astronomy |
| Notable works | Irshād dhawī al-cirfān ilā ṣinācat al-qaffān |
Al-Isfazārī was a contemporary of the Persian polymath Umar al-Khayyam and the Persian astronomer Al-Khazini. Al-Isfazārī's main work, Irshād dhawī al-cirfān ilā ṣinācat al-qaffān (Guiding the Possessors of Learning in the Art of the Steelyard), sets out the theory of the steelyard balance with unequal arms. His other surviving works include a summary of Euclid's Elements, a text on geometrical measurements, and a treatise in Persian on meteorology.
Al-Isfazārī's corpus of mechanics is composed of two sets of texts, which have been published as Matn al-Muẓaffar al-Isfazārī fī cilmay al-aṯqāl wa’l-ḥiyal by the Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation.
References
Sources
- Abattouy, Mohammed (2007). "Wābkanawī: Shams al‐Munajjim [Shams al‐Dīn] Muḥammad ibn ҁAlī Khwāja al‐Wābkanawī [Wābkanawī]". In Hockey, Thomas; et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer. pp. 577–578. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1433. ISBN 978-1-4419-9918-4.
Further reading
- Abattouy, Mohammed; Al-Hassani, Salim (17 November 2015). "The Mechanical Corpus of Al-Isfizārī in the Sciences of Weights and Ingenious Devices: New Arabic Texts in Theoretical and Practical Mechanics". Muslim Heritage. FSTC Ltd. Archived from the original on 1 February 2023. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
