Petra G. Schmidl.Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter: Zur Bestimmung der...

Petra G. Schmidl. Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter: Zur Bestimmung derGebetszeiten und der Qibla bei al-Abai¯, Ibn Rai¯q una al-Fa¯risi¯ , Volume 1: Texte undÜbersetzungen; . Volume 2: Erläuterungen und Zusammenfassungen .Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter: Zur Bestimmung der Gebetszeiten undder Qibla bei al‐Aṣbaḥī, Ibn Raḥīq una al‐Fārisī. Volume 1 : Texte und Übersetzungen; Volume 2 :Erläuterungen und Zusammenfassungen. (Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science: Texts andStudies, 68.) by Petra G. SchmidlReview by: By Mònica RiusIsis, Vol. 100, No. 1 (March 2009), pp. 155-156Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/599657 .

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and the Stomachion; Netz devotes considerablespace to these two works (Chs. 6, 8, and 10). Itis well known that in the Method Archimedesexplains how he found many of his results (e.g.,the area of a parabolic segment) by the heuristicuse of mechanical arguments and later provedthem in mathematically exact fashion. The es-sential parts of this work were edited and ana-lyzed by Heiberg a hundred years ago. Netz hasdeciphered individual words, considered illegi-ble in Heiberg’s time, in Proposition 14, and heoffers, accordingly, a new interpretation of thisproposition. This leads to a somewhat daringconclusion: “We find that Archimedes calcu-lated with actual infinities in direct opposition toeverything historians of mathematics have al-ways believed about their discipline. . . . We seethat with this concept of infinity . . . the geniusof Archimedes pointed the way toward theachievements of modern science itself. . . .Archimedes foresaw a glimpse of Set Theory,the product of the mature mathematics of thelate nineteenth century” (p. 203).

Again, for the Stomachion—the text de-scribes a game, the sense of which Archimedesscholars do not agree on—Netz offers a newmeaning. It concerns the division of a squareinto fourteen triangles. Netz suggests that per-haps Archimedes tried to show how many dif-ferent ways the triangle can be combined toform a square. It can be shown that there are17,152 distinct solutions. This way of cutting asquare into parts and reassembling them isunique in Greek mathematics. Netz writes: “Iftrue, and most historians think I am probablyright, then this would make Archimedes the firstauthor, ever, on combinatorics” (p. 55).

Our knowledge of Archimedes’ work couldindeed be increased, a little, by an exact anal-ysis of the palimpsest. But the claim made inthe subtitle and on the dust jacket of the book(“How a medieval prayer book is revealingthe true genius of antiquity’s greatest scien-tist”) is an exaggeration; one suspects it wasincluded simply to promote sales. The “geniusof Archimedes” was already known, particu-larly from the edition of J. L. Heiberg. It wasHeiberg who did the pioneering work andestablished Archimedes’ text by using allavailable witnesses, including the palimpsest.It seems inappropriate to write, as Netz andNoel do: “By the time they [the members ofthe modern team] finished, they had discov-ered completely new texts from the ancientworld and had changed the history of science”(p. 2).

MENSO FOLKERTS

Petra G. Schmidl. Volkstumliche Astronomieim islamischen Mittelalter: Zur Bestimmung derGebetszeiten und der Qibla bei al-As�bah� ı�, IbnRah� ı�q una al-Fa�risı�. Volume 1: Texte und Uber-setzungen; Volume 2: Erlauterungen undZusammenfassungen. (Islamic Philosophy, The-ology, and Science: Texts and Studies, 68.) 857pp. Leiden: Brill, 2007. $399 (cloth).

The Institute for History of Science at the Jo-hann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat of Frankfurtam Main, headed by D. A. King since 1985, hasbeen one of the most productive centers for thehistory of Arabic science. Petra Schmidl’s re-cent book is a magnificent addition to the insti-tute’s contributions. This essay, the publishedversion of her Ph.D. dissertation, is a treatise onfolk astronomy in medieval Islam. The title ex-plains the aim of the work precisely: the studyand translation of texts written by three medi-eval scholars—al-As�bah� ı�, Ibn Rah� ı�q, and al-Fa�risı�—on the determination of the times ofprayer and the orientation of the qibla. As Kinghas pointed out on many occasions, folk astron-omy is a basic element of the history of Islamicscience, since Muslim traditionalists see theheavens as reflecting the glory of God. Actually,the Koran encourages the study of the sun,moon, and stars in order to ensure faithful ob-servance of religious duties. What is more, thesayings and practices of the Prophet recorded inthe hadith literature and the pronouncements ofearly authorities on this matter offer the Mus-lims a huge corpus of sacred astronomy, al-though they limit the field of study to the scienceas it applies to religion. As this kind of literatureflourished for centuries, hundreds of treatises arestill extant in manuscript. Usually, the booksconcerned with folk astronomy do not use math-ematical methods or tables but instead offer sim-ple schemes for timekeeping (using shadows byday and lunar mansions by night) and teachapproximate methods for finding the qibla usingthe winds, the sun, and the stars. It is true thatfolk astronomy was written in a simplified formfor a readership without mathematical knowl-edge. But sometimes (Ibn al-Banna�’ of Mar-rakech [d. 1321] is a good example) the authorswere accomplished scientists who wrote ver-sions that today would be known as populariza-tions. The materials Schmidl analyzes representa significant part of the folk astronomy compiledin Yemen, a true oasis if we compare it with theproduction in the rest of Arabia.

Given that we already had available, for in-stance, King’s In Synchrony with the Heavens(Brill, 2004, 2005), we might ask whether thesetwo volumes are really necessary. The answer is

BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 100 : 1 (2009) 155

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a resounding yes. Far from being the definitiveword on the subject, Schmidl’s book shows thata great deal of material remains to be studied.This is not a brief overview, but a profoundanalysis of the three Rasulid treatises. Schmidlbegins by putting the authors in chronologicalorder, summarizing their lives and works andexplaining the similarities and differences be-tween them, and listing the manuscripts sheused. Al-As�bah� ı�, associated with the Mosque ofal-Janad, finished his extensive treatise on folkastronomy, entitled Kita�b al-Yawa�qı�t fi ‘ilm al-mawa�qı�t, in the year 654H (1256). Ibn Rah� ı�qwrote a treatise, its precise title unknown (allthat can be read of the title is . . .‘ala� madha�hibal-‘Arab), that contains information of a verysimple kind on the calendar, the lunar mansions,and time-reckoning. It was probably compiledin Mecca in the eleventh century, and it is im-portant because it describes the practices of themuezzins in early Islam, before sophisticatedmathematical methods were applied to time-keeping. Finally, the third author was an Adeniknown—not by chance—as al-Fa�risı�. He is theauthor of the earliest surviving Yemeni tables,the zı�j compiled for the Rasulid Sultan al-Muz�affar (late thirteenth century). Among hisbooks is a treatise on folk astronomy, Tuhfatal-ra�ghib, that concerns the same topic. Thebook deals with timekeeping and the determina-tion of the qibla by methods of folk astronomyand includes a statement on the winds and theirastronomically defined limits, which correspondto the alignments of the walls of the Kaaba. Thetreatise shows the world structured in twelveregions around the Kaaba and their astronomi-cally defined qiblas.

In the second volume Schmidl provides an in-troduction that considers general questions per-taining to folk astronomy—that is, the religiousprinciples (Koran and hadith literature) and theastronomical foundations in the service of Islam.A detailed list with identifications of all the people,regions, and works cited in the three treatises anda brief explanation of the units of measure used areprovided. Then follows the study of al-As�bah�ı�’sKita�b al-Yawa�qı�t fı� ‘ilm al-mawa�qı�t, Ibn Rah�ı�q’s. . .‘ala� madha�hib al-‘Arab, and al-Fa�risı�’s Tuhfatal-ra�ghib, a summary with a comparison of thecontents, and the final conclusions. In addition tothe study, the editions, and the translations, thecomplete glossary will be useful to nonspecialistreaders (those unfamiliar with Islamic matters orthe history of Arabic science) because it includesquotations from the Koran and hadith literatureand explanations of specific terms (e.g., lunarmansions). Thus Volkstumliche Astronomie im is-lamischen Mittelalter will be of interest to a wide

variety of readers, even those without previousknowledge of the subject. The essay is written inGerman, so its readership is limited to those whomaster the language. It is to be hoped that anEnglish translation will be published soon.

Petra Schmidl continues the scientific tradi-tion established in Frankfurt with this compre-hensive study of folk astronomy in medievalYemen.

MONICA RIUS

Nancy G. Siraisi. History, Medicine, and theTraditions of Renaissance Learning. xvii � 438pp., figs., bibl., index. Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 2007. $75 (cloth).

This is a book about interdisciplinarity. Its sub-ject is the intersection of medical and historicallearning during the Renaissance. Weaving to-gether major themes from two distinct histori-ographies—the rise of “medical humanism” andthe development of new methods of studying thepast by historians and antiquaries—History,Medicine, and the Traditions of RenaissanceLearning sheds new light on both the history ofmedicine and the intellectual history of earlymodern Europe.

Nancy Siraisi’s book is divided into twoparts. The first treats the presence of historicalconcerns within medical literature, while thesecond examines historical texts produced byphysicians, though not directly related to medi-cine. Thus, in Part 1, we learn how physiciansreflected on historical change in the context ofcontroversies over the outbreak of new diseaseslike the morbus gallicus, unreported by the an-cients, and over the alleged decline in humanstature since antiquity (Ch. 1); how histories ofthe human past, individual and collective, wereincorporated into various genres of medical lit-erature, such as narratives of remarkable cures,autopsy reports, and commentaries on Hippo-cratic texts like the Epidemics, with its casehistories, and Airs, Waters, Places, which con-tained substantial historical and ethnographicmaterial (Ch. 3); and how Renaissance medicalwriters increasingly produced disciplinary his-tories and biographies of famous predecessors.Part 2 emphasizes local context, presenting casestudies of physicians pursuing historical and an-tiquarian studies in Milan, Rome, Vienna, andthe Levant. Siraisi examines the skeptical reflec-tions on historical method by the Milanese phy-sician and master of paradox Girolamo Cardano(Ch. 4); the seamless synthesis of medicine andantiquarianism engendered by public healthprojects in papal Rome (Ch. 5); imperial patron-

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