IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB538268368

Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation of the Almagest and the revision of tables (2023)

Zieme, Stefan (Author)

Journal for the History of Astronomy
Volume: 54
Issue: 1
Pages: 3-33
Publication date: 2023
Language: English

URI: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00218286221140848

DOI: 10.1177/00218286221140848

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Scientific collaboration Transmission of ideas Transmission of texts Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence Tables; catalogs; lists Arabic language Latin language Translations Medieval Ptolemy Gerard of Cremona

Until the late 15th century, knowledge of Ptolemy’s Almagest in the Latin West was constituted by Gerard of Cremona’s translation from Arabic into Latin. The text of Gerard’s translation has been examined carefully and its dependence on two different Arabic versions is well studied. However, the tables of Gerard’s Latin Almagest have not been scrutinized, and the relation to their Arabic or Greek counterparts has not been examined. In this article, I will analyze the historical mathematical structure of tables in Gerard’s Latin Almagest translated from the Arabic in comparison to their Arabic and Greek precursors. While Gerard’s text has proved to be a faithful translation from Arabic templates, some of the tables will turn out to be different. Fundamental tables for, for example, the chord interpolation values, declination, and rising times appear to have been recomputed in order to match Ptolemy’s proofs and paradigm computations, which, in contrast, generally diverge in both Greek and Arabic tradition with the tables. It remains unclear if Gerard himself or someone in his company recalculated these tables and thus deliberately aimed to correct the ancient classic of astronomy. By a systematic analysis of these tables, I intend to provide a novel perspective on the medieval transmission and translation of knowledge, its cross-cultural exchange, and especially the practice of Gerard of Cremona and his collaborator(s).

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB538268368

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Marc Moyon; (2023)
Le 'liber Augmenti Et Diminutionis: Contribution a L'histoire Des Mathematiques Medievales

Article Cooper, Glen M.; (2012)
Departing from the Latin Galen and Its Arabic Sources in the Aldine Edition

Article McVaugh, Michael; (2009)
Towards a Stylistic Grouping of the Translations of Gerard of Cremona

Article Young, Gregg de; (2004)
The Latin Translation of Euclid's Elements Attributed to Gerard of Cremona in Relation to the Arabic Transmission

Chapter Filius, Lou; (2007)
The Arabic Transmission of the Historia Animalium of Aristotle

Book Marion Daspens; (2024)
Les Masā’il Khālid li-Maryānus al-rāhib dans leurs versions arabe et latine. Éditions critiques et traductions

Article Siam Bhayro; (2017)
On the Problem of Syriac “Influence” in the Transmission of Greek Science to the Arabs: The Cases of Astronomy, Philosophy, and Medicine

Article Nadia Ambrosetti; (2018)
“Farai Sicome Tòe Amaestrato” (You will Perform, as I Taught You): Notes about Medieval Didactics of Algebra

Thesis Maria Americo; (2019)
An Analysis of Ninth-Century Reception of Claudius Ptolemy's Astronomy in the Arabic Tradition

Article Sidoli, Nathan; Berggren, J. L.; (2007)
The Arabic Version of Ptolemy's Planisphere or Flattening the Surface of the Sphere: Text, Translation, Commentary

Article Marc Moyon; (2020)
L’appropriation des sciences géométriques arabes en Occident médiéval

Article Sébastien Moureau; (2020)
Min al-Kīmiyā’ ad Alchimiam. The Transmission of Alchemy from the Arab-Muslim world to the Latin West in the Middle Ages

Article Charles Burnett; (2020)
«Arabica veritas»: Europeans’ Search for «Truth» in Arabic Scientific and Philosophical Literature of the Middle Ages

Article Scott L. Montgomery; (2018)
Mobilities of Science: The Era of Translation into Arabic

Book Hunayn Ibn Ishaq; (2016)
Hunayn Ibn Ishaq on His Galen Translations

Book José Martínez Gázquez; (2016)
The Attitude of the Medieval Latin Translators Towards the Arabic Sciences

Article C. Philipp E. Nothaft; (2024)
Were the tables of Ibn Isḥāq al-Tūnisī known in Paris c.1300?

Article Kevin Krisciunas; Belén Bistué; (2019)
Notes on the transmission of Ptolemy's Almagest and some geometrical mechanisms to the era of Copernicus

Book Violet Moller; (2020)
The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found

Article Patrick Gautier Dalché; (2013)
Géographie Arabe et géographie Latine au XII siècle