Qāsim ibn Muṭarrif al-Qaṭṭān: Abū Muḥammad Qāsim ibn Muṭarrif ibn ҁAbd al-Raḥmān al-Qaṭṭān al-Ṭulayṭulī al-Qurṭubī al-Andalusī
FlourishedCordova, Spain, Tenth Century
Qāsim ibn Muṭarrif al-Qaṭṭān may well represent the earliest astronomers in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus) of whom we have knowledge. Though known as a reciter of the Quran (muqri’) and traditionalist with the sobriquet al-shaykh al-ra’īs (Principal Shaykh), only one of his works is extant, a study of cosmological and astronomical subjects. However, in the biographical dictionaries, there is no reference to Qaṭṭān’s interest in cosmology or astronomy. From what we know of the lives of his teachers, we can deduce that he was born at the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth century. An analysis of Qaṭṭān’s work offers only two chronological details – a quotation from Maslama al-Majrīṭī and the following statement in the title of the star table: “We found its longitude in the ecliptic in the year 300 of the Hijra” (912–913).
If the attribution is correct, Qaṭṭān’s work, entitled Kitāb al-hay’a(Book on cosmology), would be the first extant...
Selected References
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