Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī

Athir al-Din al-Abhari ( Persian اثیرالدین ابهری Asir od-Din Abhari , * probably in Mosul ; † possibly 1265 in Shabestar ) was an astronomer, mathematician, logician and philosopher.

Sometimes he is also called Athir al-Din al Munajim, the astrologer. The occasional addition al-Samarquandi indicates that his ancestors came from Samarkand, the addition al-Abhari that he comes from the Abhar tribe. There are different opinions about his place of birth, most likely he came from Mosul.

According to the historian Ibn Challikan , a student of al-Abhari, he was a student of Kamal al-Din ibn Yunus (died 1242) and was an assistant in the Badriyya school in Mosul. According to other sources, he was a student of the theologian Fachr ad-Din ar-Razi (died 1210), taught in the Sharafiya School in Baghdad in 1248, traveled to Iran , lived in Sivas in Anatolia and died paralyzed in Azerbaijan .

He was in contact with eminent scholars, including the astronomers Nasīr ad-Dīn at-Tūsī and al-Qazwīnī . He wrote a textbook of astronomy (Risaya fil al-hay'a) and an outline ( epitome ) of astronomy (Muchtasar fil al-hay'a) , based on works by Kushjar ibn Labban and Jabir ibn Aflah . He wrote a treatise on the astrolabe and commentaries on older astronomical handbooks with tables (Zidsche) .

Among his mathematical works is a correction (Islah) by Euclid with an attempt to prove the parallel postulate . The work was criticized by Shams al-Din al-Samarqandi .

literature

• Hüseyin Sarioglu: Abhari: Athir al-Din al-Mufaddal al-Samarquandi al-Abhari , in Thomas Hockey (Ed.), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Astronomers, Springer 2007