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MUZAFFAR IQBAL (ed.), New a specific section on the connec- Perspectives on the History of tions between Qurÿān and Islamic Science, xxiv+546 science; the second volume, pages, ISBN: 978-0-7546- Contemporary Issues on Islam 2914-6. Vol. 3 of Muzaffar and Science, focuses on contem- Iqbal (ed), Islam and Science: porary and future attitudes Historic and Contemporary among Muslims with respect to Perspectives, 4 vols. Alder- science, with a section on studies shot: Ashgate, 2012. in traditional Islamic cosmology; volume 3, New Perspectives on This book is the third in a series the History of Islamic Science, of four multi-author volumes on gathers together studies on texts various aspects of the relation- and instruments relevant to the ship between Islam and Science, history of Islamic science (main- which brings together nearly 90 ly mathematics and astronomy) papers previously published in as well as articles on the decline scientific journals. The editor, of the Islamic scientific tradition; Muzaffar Iqbal, is the president and volume 4, Studies in the of the Center for Islam and Making of Islamic Science: Science (Alberta, Canada), an Knowledge in Motion, considers organization dedicated to “the the reception of knowledge from promotion of research and the classical traditions in the diffusion of knowledge on all Islamic area, its development by aspects of Islam”. The Center Islamic scholars, and its eventual publishes the journal Islam & passage on to the West. Science, which explores “Islamic In a wide-ranging introduction perspectives on science, civi- (pp. xi-xxiii), Iqbal’s main con- lization and intellectual history”, cern is to show how the studies and has recently finished the first on the Islamic scientific tradition volume of an ambitious Inte- in recent decades have subs- grated Encyclopedia of the tantially revised the “standard Qurÿān. narrative” of the history of Iqbal has organized the ma- Islamic science established by terial in these four volumes nineteenth-century Orientalists, thematically: the first volume, which presented the enterprise of Studies in the Islam and Science science in the Islamic civi- Nexus, contains discussions of lization as “a short-lived and the nature of the relationship limited activity, induced by the between Islam and Science, with translation movement which

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brought Greek science into title Building Blocks of the Arabic” and “strangled by Revisionist History; and Part III, Islamic orthodoxy” (p. xi). labelled Looking Forward, con- According to Iqbal, the studies sists of the inaugural lecture by of the new narrative have Roshdi Rashed at the 21st transformed our understanding International Congress of of four key areas, showing that: History of Science (Mexico City, (1) Islam has never been 7-14 July 2001), containing opposed to science, (2) European meta-disciplinary reflections on science and technology only the “History of science at the surpassed Islamic science in the beginning of the 21st century”. sixteenth century, (3) Muslim Rashed is clearly the favoured scientists not only received and author as regards the selection of transmitted the ancient and articles. He contributes eight of classical scientific heritage, but the volume’s 21 chapters, which also achieved a degree of inno- include, besides the lecture men- vation and development that tioned (Chapter 21): an analysis made possible the emergence of of the reception in the Islamic modern science, which took area of Diophantus’ Arithmetica place when (4) European and his text on burning mirrors, scholars began to show an inte- as examples of the interaction rest in the original Arabic between translation and research scientific works. in the process of transmission of The 21 papers collected in Greek scientific thought into New Perspectives on the History Arabic (Chapter 2); a study of of Islamic Science are unevenly three different types of inter- distributed in the book’s three action between mathematics and sections: Part I, entitled Theor- theoretical philosophy in class- etical Underpinnings, is “a sam- ical Islam, illustrated by the ple of writings which have con- works of al-Kind÷, al-Æýs÷ and tributed toward the emergence of al-Sijz÷ (Chapter 4); a review of the revised understanding in two treatises by the tenth-century several key areas” (p. xvii) and astronomer Abý Sahl al-Qýh÷, contains six papers; Part II is “a On the distance from the center sample of new studies which are of the Earth to the shooting stars the building blocks of a new and On what is seen of sky and narrative on the history of sea, presented here as examples Islamic science” (p. xviii), and of the development of proced- comprises 14 articles under the ures and methods that allowed

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the monitoring of observational (qiblah)” (p. 3, Chapter 1); the phenomena (Chapter 6); an analysis of an astronomical examination of another short text instrument made by NasÐýlus by al-Qýh÷ that illustrates how (active in Baghdad between 890 “the attempt made by the Greek and 930), which provides a and Arabic commentators to graphic solution to the problem resolve, with the help of geo- of the determination of the time metry, the problems related to of day as a function of the solar the movement found in the altitude and also represents the Physics of Aristotle, led to new earliest known solar and calen- research on kinetics, and more drical scales in the Islamic area general in mechanics” (p. 123, (Chapter 11); and astronomy and Chapter 7); a discussion of the mathematics in Syria and Egypt authorship of the treatise on The between the thirteenth and Configuration of the universe, sixteenth centuries, demons- traditionally attributed to Al- trating that high level research hazen (Chapter 9); an analysis of was carried out in these areas Ibn Sahl’s tenth-century treatise after the so-called Golden Age on burning instruments, showing of Islamic science (Chapter 14). that the geometrical study of Two papers by Shamsuddin lenses existed in the tradition of Arif are included on Ibn S÷n×, in Arabic optics before Ibn al- the areas of cosmology (Chapter Haytham (Chapter 12); and an 5) and natural philosophy essay on the history of the (Chapter 13). The rest of the Arabic versions of Apollonius’ authors selected contribute sin- Conics (Chapter 15). gle papers. In Chapter 3, Mo- The next author in terms of hamad Abdalla challenges the the number of articles is David A. paradigm of decline of Islamic King, with three reprints which science after the eleventh cen- deal with the research on Arabic tury through the work of Ibn manuscripts and astronomical Khaldýn. In Chapter 8, Christian instruments. King’s papers ex- Houzel analyses the mathem- plore how this research “has led atical tools used by Ibn al- to a new understanding of the Haytham in his idiosyncratic different ways in which Muslim non-Ptolemaic description of the scholars over many centuries movement of the wandering stars. applied scientific methods to In Chapter 10, Julio Samsó anal- determine the times of prayer yses the use of the system of and the sacred direction lunar mansions for timekeeping

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in the works of the Andalus÷ with the transmission of scien- author al-Judh×m÷ (end of 12th- tific ideas from the Islamic beginning of 13th centuries) and world to Renaissance Europe, the Moroccan muwaqqit al-J×dir÷ and focuses on the role played (1375 - c. 1416). In Chapter 16, by European scholars like the Nathan Sidoli and Takanori Orientalist Guillaume Postel Kusuba deal with the Arabic (1510-1581), who appears to edition and revision of Theo- have studied Arabic astro- dosius’ Spherics carried out by nomical texts in their original Na½÷r al-D÷n al-Æýs÷ in order to language; these findings thus produce a mathematically sound demonstrate that the scientific text that could be used as a self- works of the Islamic world could contained argument by a student. have been transmitted to In Chapter 17, Adi Setia de- Copernicus and others without velops al-R×z÷’s atomic con- the need for Latin intermediaries. ception of time, motion, distance We might well think of many and change through a trans- emblematic authors in the field lational survey of his MaÐ×lib of the history of Islamic science þ¶liyah. In Chapter 18, Emilia who are not represented in Calvo and Roser Puig shed new Iqbal’s choice of articles (and light on some features of the also of other important studies universal plate devised by the by the selected authors), but the eleventh-century Andalus÷ astro- book does not intend to be nomer þAl÷ b. Khalaf. In Chapter exhaustive and, all in all, it 19, Edward S. Kennedy and certainly fulfils its explicit Nazim Faris study the eclipse purpose of presenting “a sample technique preserved in the Z÷j of of the rich harvest which has the ninth-century astronomer fundamentally changed our view Ya¬y× b. Ab÷ Man½ýr; this is the of the enterprise of science in oldest paper reproduced in the Islamic civilization from the way volume and an excellent ex- it was viewed at the beginning of ample of how, as early as 1970, the twentieth century” (p. xxi). historians of science were using computer programming techni- Josep Casulleras ques to establish and verify the underlying parameters and TIHON, Anne, Πτολεμαίου procedures of the astronomical Πρόχειροι Κανόνες. Les tables. Finally, in Chapter 20 Tables Faciles de Ptolémée. George Saliba concerns himself Vol. 1a. Tables A1 – A2.