Article ID: CBB691683096

What Did Medieval Readers Take to Be “Al-Ḥajjāj's Version” of Euclid's Elements? The Evidence of Ms Paris, Bnf, Héb. 1011 (2020)

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The aim of this paper is to shed light on the transmission of Euclid's Elements in the Middle Ages, and in particular of an Arabic version of this work, which medieval sources attribute to al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar. I examine some medieval reports that explicitly ascribe certain textual variants and diagrams to this “Ḥajjāj-version.” These reports concern Books II–V and VII–X. I compare them to a medieval Hebrew version of the Elements, a single copy of which is extant in MS Paris, BnF, héb. 1011. The comparison reveals that no fewer than 14 and as many as 16 such reports conform to the Hebrew version. On the basis of these results, I argue that the circulation of a single complete version of the Elements widely recognized by medieval readers to be authored by al-Ḥajjāj, and one which perhaps was indeed his work, was not a myth.

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Authors & Contributors
De Young, Gregg
Lévy, Tony
Elior, Ofer
Brentjes, Sonja
Burnett, Charles
Di Donato, Silvia
Journals
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy
Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism
Historia Mathematica
Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Iranian Studies
Publishers
Cambridge University Press
Anchor
Aracne
Brill
Concepts
Mathematics
Transmission of texts
Translations
Hebrew language
Arabic language
Arab/Islamic world, civilization and culture
People
Euclid
Ibn Maṭar, al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yusūf
Averroes
Adelard of Bath
al-Nayrīzī
Archimedes
Time Periods
Medieval
12th century
14th century
15th century
16th century
Early modern
Places
Toledo (Spain)
Persia (Iran)
Europe
Italy
Baghdad (Iraq)
Córdoba (Spain)
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