Abū Muḥammad ˓Abd al‐Jabbār ibn ˓Abd al‐Jabbār al‐Kharaqī was a Persian astronomer, mathematician and geographer. He was born at Kharaq near Marw and worked at Marw at the court of Saljuq Sultan Sanjar (1118–1157). Al‐Kharaqī wrote in Arabic.
His main work was Muntahā al‐idrāk fī taqāsīm al‐aflāk (The Highest Understanding of the Divisions of Celestial Spheres). The work consists of three books: astronomical, geographical, and chronological. It is written in the tradition of Arabic astronomical textbooks initiated by al‐Farghānī, continued by Ibn al‐Haytham, and widely spread after al‐Kharaqī in the form of Arabic and Persian books on the science of cosmography (˓ilm al‐hay˓a). In these books the planets are considered not as supported by imaginary circles according to Ptolemy's Almagest, but as supported by massive material spheres in which they move in tubes.
His Kitāb al‐tabṣira fī ˓ilm al‐hay˓a(Introduction to the Science of Cosmography), written in the same tradition, is the...
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Matvievskaya, Galina P. and B. A. Rosenfeld. Mathematicians and Astronomers of Medieval Islam and Their Works (8th–17th c.). Moscow: Nauka, 1983. 325–6 (in Russian).
Sarton, George. Introduction to the History of Science. Vol. 2. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1927. 204–5.
Wiedemann, Eilhard and K. Kohl. Einleitung zu Werken von al‐Charaqi. Aufsätze zur arabischen Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Vol. 2. Ed. E. Wiedemann. Hildesheim, New York: Olns, 1970. 628–43.
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Rosenfeld, B. (2008). Al‐Kharaqī. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9317
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