Banū Mūsā

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The Banū-Mūsā brothers are three Iranian scholars who worked in Baghdad in the 9th century . They are known from books on geometry , astronomy, and mechanical inventions (machines). You are considered to be a co-founder of the Islamic mathematical tradition and some of the earliest mathematicians to carry on Greek mathematics.

Their names were Jafar Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (before 803 - January or February 873), Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (born and died in the 9th century) and Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir (born and died in the 9th century) . Their scientific work is difficult to separate. The eldest of the three brothers, Muhammad, appears to have been the most important of the brothers. Like al-Hasan, he worked particularly on geometry, but also on astronomy. Ahmad dealt mainly with mechanics.

Life

The name Banū Mūsā literally means sons of Moses . They were the sons of Mūsā ibn Shākir , an astrologer and astronomer who was a mugger in his youth, worked for the then governor of Khorasan and later caliph in Baghdad al-Ma'mūn (he ruled 813-833) and was friends with him . He lived in Merw and entrusted his three sons to Al-Mamun after his death. Al-Mamun himself was very interested in science and therefore founded the House of Wisdom as a learned center. After recognizing their scientific talent, al-Mamun trained the brothers in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. There they acquired and translated Greek manuscripts of philosophical and scientific content. Since they were later very wealthy, they used their own resources for the acquisition of expensive manuscripts and the translation work.

The mathematician al-Khwarizmi (known for his algebra), the Euclid translator al-Haggag ibn Yusuf and the philosopher al-Kindī also worked in the House of Wisdom . The Banu-Musa brothers were the leading scholars with al-Chwarizmi, working with Hunayn ibn Ishaq (a leading translator of medical works) and Thābit ibn Qurra (whom they brought to the House of Wisdom and who translated Euclid and Apollonios of Perge ) . Muhammad was close friends with Hunayn. The Banu Musa brothers also worked in the House of Wisdom among the caliphs who followed al-Mamun. Under the ruling caliph al-Mutawakkil from 847 onwards, quarrels arose in the House of Wisdom, in which the Banu-Musa brothers took sides against al-Kindī. They achieved that he fell out of favor with the caliph.

Self-regulating lamp in an Arabic manuscript of her book of inventions

plant

Her best-known work is the book on the measurement of plane and spherical figures (Kitab marifat masakhat al-ashkal), which contains Archimedes' results (circle measurement , sphere and cylinder) and develops them further. Manuscripts of the book are in Oxford , Paris , Berlin , Istanbul and Rampur in India. It was translated into Latin by Gerhard von Cremona in the 12th century as Verba filiorum (Liber trium fratum de geometria), of which manuscripts have been preserved in Paris, Madrid , Basel , Toruń and Oxford. In the book they used the Eudoxos exhaustion method, which was also used by Archimedes , for example to specify a method for measuring circles that differed from Archimedes', and interpreted geometric statements about areas and volumes in contrast to Greek tradition (which describes the ratio of areas and volumes of different bodies each other) with specific numerical values. The book also contained the Heron theorem , which they attributed to Archimedes, and a method of dividing the angle into three , using a kinematic method.

As astronomers, for example, they determined latitude on behalf of the caliph, determined longitude from observing lunar eclipses simultaneously in Baghdad and Samarra and determined the length of the year. Muhammad wrote several books on astronomy, including the movement of the celestial spheres, in which he criticized Claudius Ptolemy .

Your book of inventions (Kitab al-Hiyal) from 850 listed about a hundred apparatuses with illustrations, including many automatons. Partly they were inspired by Heron of Alexandria and Philon of Byzantium , but also by Persian, Indian and Chinese sources and the book contained many of its own inventions, especially on control mechanisms of automatons. It comes from Ahmad and manuscripts are in Berlin and the Vatican.

You wrote nearly twenty books, but most (but three) are lost. Among them was a commentary on the conic sections of Apollonios and a book on music theory .

Fonts

  • Donald Routledge Hill (translator): Banu Musa: The book of ingenious devices (Kitāb al-ḥiyal) , Dordrecht, Reidel, 1979
    • Arabic edition edited by Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, Aleppo, Institute for the History of Arabic Science 1981
  • The English translation and Latin edition of Gerhard von Cremona of the Verba filiorum is in Marshall Claggett Archimedes in the Middle Ages , Volume 1, The Arabo-Latin Tradition, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press 1964, pp. 223-367
    • The Arabic edition appeared in Hyderabad in 1940 : Rasaʾil al-Ṭūsī

literature

  • DR Hill: Banu Musa , in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume 7, pp. 640-641, 2nd edition, Leiden, Brill 1997 and in Helaine Selin (Ed.) Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures , Kluwer / Springer, Volume 1, 2008
  • DR Hill: Islamic Science and Engineering , Edinburgh University Press 1993
  • J. al-Darrbagh: Banu Musa , in Dictionary of Scientific Biography , Online
  • Marshall Clagett: Archimedes in the Middle Ages , Volume 1, Madison, Wisconsin 1964
  • Moritz Steinschneider : The sons of Musa ben Schakir , Bibliotheca mathematica, Leipzig, 1887, pp. 44–48, 71–75
  • Heinrich Suter : Mathematicians and astronomers of the Arabs and their works , Leipzig 1900
  • Suter: About the geometry of the sons of Musa ben Shakir , Bibliotheca mathematica, Volume 3, 1902, pp. 259-272
  • Joseph Casulleras: Banu Musa , in Thomas Hockey The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers , Springer Reference 2007, pdf
  • David Pingree : Banu Musa , Encyclopaedia Iranica 1988
  • Roshdi Rashed: Les Mathématiques Infinitésimales du IXe au XIe Siècle 1: Fondateurs et commentateurs: Banū Mūsā, Ibn Qurra, Ibn Sīnān, al-Khāzin, al-Qūhī, Ibn al-Samḥ, Ibn Hūd , London, Al Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation 1993
  • Roshdi Rashed: Archimedean learning in the Middle Ages: the Banu Musa , Historia Scientiarum, Volume 6, 1996, pp. 1-16
  • Roshdi Rashed: Les commencements des mathematiques archimdienne en arabe: Banu Musa , in Ahmad Hasnawi (ed.): Perspectives arabes et medievales sur la tradition scientifique et philosophique grecque , Löwen: Peeters 1997, pp. 1-19
  • Ahmad Y. Al-Hassan (editor): The different aspects of islamic culture , Volume 4, Science and Technology in Islam , Part 1, 2, Beirut, UNESCO 2001
  • F. Hauser: About the Kitab al hijal - the work on the ingenious arrangements - of the Banu Musa , treatises on the history of natural science and medicine, volume 1, Erlangen 1922
  • T. Sato: Quadrature of the surface area of ​​a sphere in the early Middle Ages - Johannes de Tinemue and Banu Musa , Historia Scientiarum, No. 28, 1985, pp. 61-90

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ al-Darrbagh Banu Musa , Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. ^ Edition by Maximilian Curtze in the Nova Acta Leopoldina, Volume 49, 1885
  3. ^ David A. King Astronomy in the islamic world , in Helaine Selin Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures , Kluwer / Springer, Volume 1, 2008, p. 338