Bornprobably Khafr near Shiraz, (Iran), circa1470
Died probably (Iran), after 1525
Khafrī was an Iranian theoretical astronomer who produced innovative planetary theories at a time well beyond the supposed period of the decline of Islamic science. Little is known about his life. Various Shīҁī writers claim Khafrī as one of their own religious scholars, and the sources assert that he was influential in the program of the Safavid Shāh Ismāҁīl (died: 1524) to make Shīҁism the official Islamic sect of Iran. The fact that Khafrī wrote works in the fields of both religion and astronomy seems to indicate that at his time and place Islamic religious scholars saw no insuperable conflict between science and religion. This appears contrary to the traditional view that science and religion were constantly at odds in Islamic society, and that, long before the lifetime of Khafrī, religious scholars effectively squelched the scientific impulse in Islam. Other examples of Islamic scientists who also...
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Selected References
Al- Khafrī, Shams al-Dīn (1994). al-Takmila fī sharh al-tadhkira. (This work has been neither edited nor published in Arabic or English translation. The following manuscripts were consulted by Saliba (1994): Zāhiriyya Library, Damascus, MSS. 6727 and 6782; India Office Library, London, Arabic MS. 747; and Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris MS. Arabe 6085.)
Ragep, F. J. (1993). Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī's Memoir on Astronomy (al-Tadhkira fīҁilm al-hay'a). 2 Vols. New York: Springer-Verlag. (Perhaps the most significant study to emerge thus far in the historiography of astronomy in Islam, in which al-Ṭūsī's treatise was pivotal.)
Rosenfeld, B. A. and Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu (2003). Mathematicians, Astronomers, and Other Scholars of Islamic Civilization and Their Works (7th-19th c.). Istanbul: IRCICA, pp. 313–314.
Saliba, George (1994). A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam. New York: New York University Press. (This is a collection of articles that are useful in that they probe deeply into several discrete figures and issues from the history of Islamic astronomy. Saliba provides helpful clarifications of a number of historical issues, including the nature of the apparent connection between the work of Islamic astronomers of the “Marāgha School” and the achievement of Nicolaus Copernicus.)
— (1994). “A Sixteenth-century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy: The Work of Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 25: 15–38. (Detailed survey of the al-Takmila fī sharh al-tadhkira from which the remarks of the present article were derived.)
— (1996). “Arabic Planetary Theories after the Eleventh Century AD.” In Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, edited by Roshdi Rashed, pp. 58–127. London: Routledge. (Important survey of the later period of theoretical astronomy in Islam. Presents many helpful descriptions and diagrams of planetary models, and traces the often subtle theoretical modifications from one model to the next.)
— (1997). “A Redeployment of Mathematics in a 16th-Century Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy.” In Perspectives arabes et médiévales sur la tradition scientifique et philosophique grecque, edited by Ahmad Hasnawi, pp. 105–122. Paris: Peeters. (A speculative description of a possibly significant shift in understanding of the role of mathematical modeling in scientific theory which occurred late in the history of Islamic astronomy, in the work of Khafrī.)
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Cooper, G.M. (2014). Khafrī: Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Khafrī al-Kāshī. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_754
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