Ali ibn Sulayman al-Hashimi

Ali ibn Sulayman al-Hashimi (Arabic: علي بن سليمان الهاشمي), known as al-Hashimi, was an Islamic astronomer and mathematician, who flourished during the late 9th century.

For other people with this surname, see Al-Hashimi (surname).
Ali ibn Sulayman al-Hashimi
علي بن سليمان الهاشمي
Bornfl. 890
Academic work
EraIslamic Golden Age
Main interestsAstronomy, mathematics
Notable worksKitāb fīʿilal al‐zījāt ("Book of the Reasons Behind Astronomical Tables")

Biography

No details of the 9th century Islamic astronomer Ali ibn Sulayman al-Hashimi's life are recorded, but he flourished in 890. As well as his work as an astronomer, he contributed to the development of irrational numbers.[1]

Kitāb fīʿilal al‐zījāt

Al-Hashimi's only known major work is Kitāb fīʿilal al‐zījāt ("Book of the Reasons Behind Astronomical Tables"), which possibly dates from the late 9th century.[1] It is a discussion of the astronomical ideas of the Greeks, Indians and Persians, which characterized Islamic astronomy before the arrival of the Ptolemaic tradition, and includes the basic theories underlying zījes, chronology, planetary cycles and equations, eclipses, timekeeping, and astrology.[2]

The work lacks an organized structure or any critical comments about other astronomers, and is prone to technical errors made by al-Hashimi, as well as mistakes by later copyists. It may have been copied by scribes in Damascus in 1288.[2]

Kitāb fīʿilal al‐zījāt is extant in a unique manuscript now preserved at Oxford University (MS. Arch. Selden. A.11). The work has no innovative ideas, is historically important, as it cites 14 works by other astronomers, most of which are lost,[note 1] and so provides information about the history of science.[1][2] It has been translated by Fuad I. Haddad and Edward Stewart Kennedy.[2]

Notes
  1. He provided commentaries on the following zījes: Ptolemy's Almagest, the Arjabhar, an Arabic translation of the Aryabhatiya by the Indian mathematician Aryabhata, the Zīj al‐Arkand, Indian astronomical tables which first reached Baghdad in the 8th century,[3] the Zīj al‐jāmiʿ produced by Kushyar Gilani, the Zīj al‐Hazūr, complied at Kandahar in Afghanistan, the Zīj al‐Shāh of Khosrow I, the Zīj al‐Shāh of Yazdigird III, Zīj al‐Sindhind (translated by Ibrāhīm al-Fazārī and his son Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Fazārī), the zīj of Yaʿqūb ibn Ṭāriq, the Zīj al‐Sindhind of Khwārizmī, the Mumtaḥan zīj of Yahya ibn Abi Mansur, two zījes of Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi, and the Zīj al‐hazārāt of Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi.[1]

References
  1. Rius 2007, p. 475.
  2. King 1987.
  3. Samsó, Julio (2020). "Ibn al-Zarqālluh: Andalusian Astronomy in the Eleventh Century". Inference. 5 (3). doi:10.37282/991819.20.55. S2CID 235869133. Retrieved 11 February 2023.

Sources

Further reading
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