Maslama al-Majriti
Maslama al-Majriti or Abu l-Qasim al-Qurtubi al-Majriti ( Arabic أبو القاسم مسلمة بن أحمد المجريطي, DMG Abū l-Qāsim Maslama b. Aḥmad al-Maǧrīṭī , also al-Majriti ; died around 1007 in Cordoba ) was an Arab astronomer, mathematician, alchemist , scholar and economist in Spain.
As the name al-Majriti suggests, he was born in Madrid . As a young man, he was probably already among the scholars at the court of the Caliph of Cordoba Abd ar-Rahman III. and dealt there with astronomy. Among other things, he reissued the astronomical tables of al-Chwarizmi for the longitude of Cordoba. He also wrote a business arithmetic book ( Muʿamalat ), a short treatise on the astrolabe and an Arabic translation of the Planisphaerium by Claudius Ptolemy (with the commentary by al-Majriti), which has only survived in Latin translation by Hermann von Carinthia from 1143.
A book on alchemy ascribed to him, the Rutbat al-hakim ( The Rank of the Wise , c. 1009), was written after his death and is probably apocryphal. In it he gives instructions for the cleaning of precious metals and describes the production of red mercury (II) oxide . He made it by gently heating mercury in a closed vessel while observing conservation of mass .
His book on magic, Ghayat al-hakim ( The Sage's Goal , also known as Picatrix ), is also likely apocryphal, but was translated into Spanish in 1256 at the direction of Alfonso X and has been a source of information on occultism across Europe.
He worked as a school educator in Cordoba and had several well-known astronomers as students.
The exoplanet Majriti was named after him after a public competition in 2015 by the IAU .
literature
- Juan Vernet: Al-Majrit. In: Dictionary of Scientific Biography
- G. Brockelmann: History of Arabic literature. Brill 1889-1936
- Hellmut Ritter (Ed.): Ghāyat al-hakim. Leipzig 1933
- German translation by Martin Plessner and Hellmut Ritter: Picatrix. The aim of the sage of pseudo-Mağrīțī. London 1962
- Eric John Holmyard : Maslama al-Majrītī and the Rutbatu'l-Hakīm. Isis, Vol. 6, 1924, pp. 293-305
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | al-Majriti, Maslama |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | al-Majriti, Abu l-Qasim al-Qurtubi; al-Majriti, Abu l-Qasim Maslama ibn Ahmad; al-Majriti, Maslama |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Islamic alchemist, mathematician and astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 10th century |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Madrid |
| DATE OF DEATH | around 1007 |
| Place of death | Cordoba |