Al-Battani

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Al-Battani (before 858 – 929), archaically Latinized as Albategnius, was an Arab Muslim astronomer, astrologer, geographer and mathematician, who lived and worked for most of his life at Raqqa, now in Syria. He is considered to be one of the greatest and most famous of the astronomers of the medieval Islamic world. Al-Battānī's writings became instrumental in the development of science and astronomy in the west. His Kitāb az-Zīj aṣ-Ṣābi’ (c. 900), is the earliest extant zīj (astronomical table) made in the Ptolemaic tradition that is hardly influenced by Hindu or Sasanian astronomy. Al-Battānī refined and corrected Ptolemy's Almagest, but also included new ideas and astronomical tables of his own. A handwritten Latin version by the Italian astronomer Plato Tiburtinus was produced between 1134 and 1138, through which medieval astronomers became familiar with al-Battānī. In 1537, a Latin translation of the zīj was printed in Nuremberg. An annotated version, also in Latin, published in three...

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