Al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haitham by Muṣṭafā Naẓīf BeyReview by: George SartonIsis, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Winter, 1943), pp. 217-218Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225846 .

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Reviews 217

MUSTAFA NAZIF BEY: 4l-Hasan ibn al-Haitham. His optical studies and discoveries. Part 1. 2+24+488 p., all in Arabic, 83 figs. Cairo, Nfiri Press, 1361 = 1942.

The publication of this important work, perhaps the most valuable of its kind in modern Arabic literature, gives me a welcome opportunity of completing my remarks on the tradition of AL- HAZEN S optics (Isis, 29, 403-06, 1938). Let me say first of all that the author, professor of physics in the school of engineering (University Fu'ad al-Awwal, Cairo) has based his elaborate inves- tigations upon the MSS of IBN AL-HAITHAM; he is acquainted with the studies made by Western orientalists, especially those of EILHARD WIEDE- MANN which are so numerous that I felt obliged to list them separately (Introd. 1, 722) but he always returns to the original text. This raises the fundamental question,-how well can that text be known?

It is a remarkable fact that IBN AL-HAITHAM'S main work, the Kitab al-manazir, which remained one of the outstanding optical authorities until the seventeenth century has never been printed in Arabic! Not only that but as great a scholar as our friend MAX MEYERHOF, could say that the original text was lost.' As we shall see presently, it is not lost, but unpublished, and if we have no access to the MSS we must use either the Latin edition of FRIEDRICH RISNER or the Arabic commentarv by KAMAL AL-DIN AL FARISI. Let us consider more closely these two possibilities.

FRIEDRICH RISNER was a Hessian, but he spent the best part of his life in Paris working under the guidance of PIERRE DE LA RAM?E (RAMUS). It was the latter who encouraged him to study IBN AL-HAITHAM'S optics and prepare a Latin edition of it. It is probable that RAMUS obtained or hoped to obtain some help for him from CATHERINE DE MEDICIS, for the handsome folio Opticae the- saurus, Aihazeni Arabis libri septem (title page in Isis, 29, 404) was dedicated to her. It was pub- lished by the Episcopii in Basel, August 1572. It is unlikely that RAMUS ever saw it, for in the mean- while the good queen had plotted the massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 24) and he was one of the martyrs. RISNER died in his native town Hersfeld in 1580. His relationship to RAMUS was illustrated in a posthumous publication, Opticae libri quatuor ex voto Petri Rami tnovissimo per Fridericum Risnerum ejusdem in mathematicis adjutorem olim cotnscripti . . . (Cassel 1606), which may be considered as the fruit of their col- laboration. To continue my earlier note on the tradition of IBN AL-HAITHAM, we may recapitulate the main events as follows: IBN AL-HAITHAM

1Legacy of Islam (334, 1931).

(XI-1), VITELO (XIII-2), RISNER'S Latin trans- lation (1572), RAMUS-RISNER (1606). KEPLER'S Paralipomena ad Vitellionem appeared in Franc- fort 1604, and his Dioptrice in Augsburg 1611. RAMUS had many followers in Holland and one of them, WILLEBRORD SNEL, annotated the book of 1606 and before his premature death in 1626 he had discovered the law of refraction which DES- CARTES rediscovered and was first to publish ten years later (1637). SNEL'S annotations were partly published by J. A. VOLLGRAFF in 1918.1

There is no reason to think that RISNER was an Arabic scholar; in his preface to the Opticae the- saurus he refers to Arabists as if he was not one of them.2 He does not indicate his MS sources, and does not refer to KAMAL AL-DIN but only to IBN AL-HAITHAM.3 It is probable that his task consisted in editing a mediaeval translation, either by GERARD OF CREMONA or perhaps by another mem- ber of the Toledo group. Comparison of RISNER'S text with Latin MSS in the Bibliotheque nationale might reveal the name of the translator. That probability becomes almost a certainty consider- ing that RISNER'S book contains not only IBN AL-HAITHAM'S main work but also the De cre- pusculis definitely ascribed to GERARD OF CRE- MONA.

KAMAL AL-DIN AL-FARISI wrote his commentary on the Kitab al-manazir at the beginning of the fourteenth century and he did this in the me- diaeval style, enclosing the original text. Each statement of IBN AL-HAITHAM is preceded by the word qala (dixit), each explanatory statement of his own by the word aqfilu (dico). Hence the text of the Manazir might be extracted from the Tanqih al-manazir but M. NAZIF bey warns us that it is not always possible or easy to do so. How does he know? Simply because there are MSS of the Matnazir which have been the basis of his own research. A series of MSS in the Fatih and Topkapu Saray libraries, Istanbul contain the whole text. Books I, II, III, VI, VII, that is, five out of seven, were written in 1083-84 by AHMAD IBN MUHAMMAD IBN JA'FAR AL-'ASKARI AL-BASRI, who seems to have been a son-in-law or relative by marriage of IBN AL-HAITHAM (d. c. 1039); he may have been his disciple and may have been able to use the latter's own copy. Books IV-V were written later, in 1248, but probably on the basis of the copy made by AHMAD in 1084 and lost. Thus we have a MS of the Mandzir almost as close to the author's copy as one could wish. In addition

1 Risneri optica cum annotationibus W. Snellii. Pars prima librum primum continens (312 p., Ghent 1918; Isis 29, 491). VOLLGRAFF is best known because of his edition of the HUYGENS' works, vol. XIV ff. (Isis, 29, 431-33).

2, e peritis Arabicae linguae hominibus didici ... 3 As far as I could see. RISNER'S Thesaurus covers 288

closely printed folio pages and is not indexed.

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218 Reviews

there is an almost complete copy of the Manazir in Hagia Sophia, written in 1494, almost certainly derived from the MSS just mentioned, and we have also for comparison the Tanqih of KAMAL AL-DIN, easily available in the edition printed in Haidarabad (2 vols. 1928-30). KAMAL AL-DIN did study not only the Mandzir but also the other optical works of IBN AL-HAITUIAM, and M. NAZIF bey has imitated his example, using the texts printed with the Tannqih and others available in MS in the Dar al-kutub of Cairo and the India Office in London.

M. NAZIF bey seems to have done his work with great thoroughness. He has tried to evaluate IBN AL-HAITHAM'S genius against the background of Egypt in the eleventh century. He always quotes IBN AL-HAITHAM' Sown words, and shows that the great Egyptian physicist fully deserves to be con- sidered one of the outstanding scientists of the Middle Ages. IBN AL-HAITHAM' Spoint of view and methods were very rational, and many of the ideas credited to ROGER BACON, LEONARDO DA VINCI, MAUROLICO, G. B. DELLA PORTA, or even KEPLER (?) should be credited to him. We are very grateful to M. NAZIF bey for his laborious and con- scientious investigations and look forward to their completion in sha' alldh. However, Western orien- talists will not be satisfied until they have a critical edition of the Kitib al-manizir itself de- rived from the Arabic and Latin MSS, from the Tanqih of KAMAL AL-DIN and the Opticae the- saurus of RISNER.

GEORGE SARTON

PAUL TANNERY: Quadrivium de Georges Pachy- mere ou VVTay,ua Tow TWcaapav paJA,uvaov aptOm,

TtK7)x IOVCrK?S ea)m7TplaS Kat aoTpovojLLav. Texte revise et etabli par le R. P. E. STE1PHANOU. (Studi e Testi, 94, cii+459 p.). Citt?a del Vati- cano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1940.

As the presence of TANNERY'S name on the title page suggests, this is a book the gestation of which was particularly long. TANNERY had already pre- pared 450 p. of the Greek text in 1886, when his energies were diverted to the editions of Dio- PHANTOS, FERMAT and DESCARTES. When he died in 1904,1 Madame TANNERY undertook to com- plete her husband's undertakings, and remem- bering his special interest in PACHYMERES she never allowed that project to sink into oblivion. She wrote me in 1922 that the work was ready for the press! Alas, it was not yet ready, but she en- listed the cooperation of canon ROME, of fathers V. LAURENT and E. STEPHANOU of the French By- zantine Institute then located in Kadikoy (near Istanbul), and finally of the Vatican Library.

1 His biography and bibliography will be found in Osiris IV (1938).

Thanks to all of those devotions kindled by her own, the work was actually printed in November 1940, and it must have given her great joy and pride to write the preface to it. However, the troubles were far from over, for the effective publi- cation of the work was stopped by the war. I did not receive it until the end of August 1942, though its voyage from the Vatican to my office took less than a month; it must have been carried by an angel.

,. .........,.4...

This Byzantine tetrabiblos is very important because of the personality of its author, GEORGIOS PACHYMERES (XIII-2) and because of the interest taken in it by Renaissance scholars. This is proved by the large number of MSS, no less than seven in the B. N., Paris, alone. Father STE'PHANOU reached the conclusion that Angelicus 38 (Rome) dating from the middle of the fourteenth century is the source of all the other MSS. In spite of the rich- ness of the MS tradition, the text was hitherto unpublished,' except for the -second part (music) edited by A. J. H. VINCENT in the Notices et ex- traits (1847) and for various fragments (see my Introd., vol. 2, 972).

Though the idea of quadrivium is of Greek origin, it developed more completely in the West. We might perhaps ascribe it to BOETIUS (VI-1 ) or his time. It was probably introduced into Eastern

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