Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī, as his name implies, was from Samarqand, in what is now Uzbekistan. We know few of his biographical details with any certainty. He is believed to have been active during the second half of the seventh AH/AD thirteenth century, since he composed a star calendar for 675 AH/AD 1276–1277 to accompany his Al-Tadhkira fī’l-Hay’a (Synopsis of Mathematical Cosmography or Hay’a). A manuscript (Istanbul, Laleli Library, 2432), probably written by one of his pupils, reports that he died in 701 AH/AD 1302. Although Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī had gathered many leading intellectuals together at the Marāgha observatory, al-Samarqandī is never mentioned among their number.
Al-Samarqandī’s earliest contributions were in the field of logic, but he is best known to historians of science for his brief tract, Kitāb Ashkāl al-Ta’sīs (Book of Fundamental Theorems), a collection of 35 propositions from Euclid’s Elements(mostly from books I and II, although proposition VI, 1 was also...
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References
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DeYoung, G. (2014). Al-Samarqandī. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9291-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9291-2
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