Preface

Maḥmūd al-Jaghmīnī’s thirteenth-century al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa provided an accessible introduction in the premodern period to Ptolemaic theoretical astronomy, for both specialists and the educated public throughout Islamic lands. It played a crucial role in the teaching, dissemination, and institutional instruction of Islamic astronomy; and the base Arabic text served as the starting point for at least sixty-one commentaries, supercommentaries, glosses, and translations (into Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew) that were composed and studied well into the nineteenth century and even beyond. The topics include basic astronomical definitions and concepts, parameters of the motions of the planets and the Earth’s inhabited zone, and, above all, a structure or configuration (hayʾa) of the universe that offered a scientific account of God’s creation. The impact and longevity of the influence of the Mulakhkhaṣ are not in question, as evidenced by thousands of extant copies of the original and its various derivatives contained in repositories worldwide. However, the focus until now has been on the work itself, leaving unaddressed questions such as: why was the Mulakhkhaṣ commissioned; who was Jaghmīnī’s target audience; and what kind of a society produced such a scholar? Moreover, ambiguity in the literature about the date for Jaghmīnī’s floruit led to speculation that there were two Jaghmīnīs, a thirteenthcentury scholar who composed the ubiquitous astronomical work al-Mulakhkhaṣ, and a fourteenth-century namesake who authored the equally popular medical treatise al-Qānūnča. Establishing that there was only one Jaghmīnī who composed a corpus of introductory scientific works during the late twelfth/early thirteenth centuries under the auspices of the Khwārizm Shāhs in Central Asia highlights that this period just before the Mongol invasions was not one of scientific stagnation, as is so often asserted. Rather, it indicates a continuity of scientific learning within Islamic lands and furthermore suggests a demand for works in the mathematical sciences and the desire of those societies to promote scientific education. The fact that I refer to Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ as an Islamic introduction to Ptolemaic astronomy, rather than simply an introduction to Ptolemaic astronomy, warrants some clarification. The commissioning of the Mulakhkhaṣ needs be situated within an Islamic context related to major and interconnected social, political, and religious transformations that were occurring during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Specifically, textual and conceptual transformations were altering the way the discipline of hayʾa (theoretical astronomy) was being taught,