Abstract
Habash al-hāsib was one of the earliest Muslim astronomers and a major contributor to the development of trigonometry. He was born in Marw, Turkestan (modern Mary, Turkmenistan) and died between AD 864 and 874. Ḥabash lived during the Abbasid empire, when the caliphs became the stewards of civilization while Europe languished in the Dark Ages. This empire preserved ancient science and philosophy by translating ancient Greek, Syriac, Sanskrit, and Persian texts into Arabic. Ḥabash himself based his work and methods on Ptolemy’s Almagest. Ḥabash held Ptolemy in high regard, calling him “the wise Ptolemy” and describing his work as having the “utmost in research and precision” (Langermann, 1985). Nevertheless, Ḥabash led the way in the Arabic development of astronomy and computational techniques that far surpassed the Ptolemaic system in accuracy, efficiency, arid elegance.
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Souder, L. et al. (1997). H. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1416-7_8
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