The Manuscript of al-Malik al-Afdal al-'Abbâs b. 'Alî b. Dâ'ûd b. Yûsuf b. 'Umar b. 'Alî ibn Rasûl; A Medieval Anthology from the Yemen, edited with an introduction by Daniel Martin Varisco and G. Rex Smith, Aris & Phillips Ltd, Warminster, Wiltshire, U.K., for the E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 1998. 27 + 542 pp.
[Editor's Note: Due to the limitations of html, it has not been possible to indicate proper transliteration for all the Arabic letters. ]
The Rasulid Sultan al-Afdal (d. 1377) was a cultured man, interested in many aspects of the world around him and its history. He is known to have compiled a dozen or so works, mainly on history but also on agriculture, medicine, astronomy and magic, only half of which are known to have survived. By way of compensation for historians of the Yemen, there has been preserved for us an anthology by an unidentified copyist (possibly one of his recent ancestors?) dealing with all manner of subjects, which was once in his possession, for it includes notes in his own hand written the year before he died. No amount of praise is adequate for the copyist and for al-Afdal; for its present owner, who had the foresight to make it available for a facsimile edition; and the two editors, who recognized its potential value for future research. Inspired and encouraged by the late Professor Robert Bertram Serjeant, to whose memory the volume is dedicated, the last two mentioned valiantly acquired photographs of the whole manuscript with over 540 pages, and ordered them in an entirely sensible fashion, now paginated. They also included a brief introduction to the Rasulids, on whom Rex Smith is the expert outside the Yemeni world, and to al-Afdal, as well as providing a most useful table of contents for the manuscript in 15 pages. Their goal was achieved in making this remarkable historical document available to a wider public.
It is almost five years since that facsimile of al-Afdal's Anthology was published. How dare a reviewer delay so long to write a review of a pair of colleagues and friends? The reason is simple: what Dan Varisco hoped I would produce was a detailed overview of the extensive sections of the anthology dealing with astronomy, astronomical instruments and astrology. This, alas, is still not forthcoming. Rather, what I shall do is simply to repeat the gist of what I wrote some 20 years ago on the astronomical content of this manuscript, adding a few bibliographical references to point to some more recent research on Yemeni astronomy in general, that is, not just on this manuscript. It would be inappropriate not to mention various studies of other parts of al-Afdal's Anthology that have appeared since the publication of the facsimile: these include The King's Dictionary. The Rasulid Hexaglot: Fourteenth Century Vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian and Mongol (Leiden: Brill, 2000), edited by Peter B. Golden; and D. M. Varisco's, "Agriculture in Rasulid Zabid." (Journal of Semitic Studies, Supplement 14. Studies on Arabia in Honour of Professor G. Rex Smith, edited by J. F. Healey and V. Porter, 323-351,Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.)
My first encounter with al-Afdal's manuscript was in 1970-71 at the American University of Beirut, where I had the pleasure of studying Ancient South Arabian with Professor Mahmoud Ghul. I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation on the works of the Fatimid astronomer Ibn Yûnus and happened to mention to Prof. Ghul that I had found that some of the Egyptian scholar's works had been known in the Yemen, whereupon he allowed me to make a copy of his microfilm of al-Afdal's Anthology. It was thus as a result of his kindness that I was able to include an overview of the astronomical contents in my book on Yemeni astronomy that was published some 10 years later (Mathematical Astronomy in the Medieval Yemen, 1983, hereafter abbreviated MAY). I also analysed some of the tables in that manuscript that related to timekeeping, but only now, 30 years later, are those descriptions finally being published (Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping in Medieval Islam, in press, hereafter SATMI).
Overviews of the two traditions of Islamic astronomy, the first as practiced by the astronomers of medieval Islam and the second, non-mathematical folk astronomy, as practiced by the legal scholars, are to be found in King, "Islamic Astronomy", and Varisco, "Islamic Folk Astronomy" in The History of Non-Western Astronomy: Astronomy Across Cultures, edited by Helaine Selin (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000). Recently, not least to provide the article "ZÎDJ" in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI2), I have, together with Julio Samsó, prepared an overview of Islamic tables and astronomical handbooks, including the most important Yemeni examples. This research is being continued by Benno van Dalen; for further information see his "Website".
The following is a brief account of the astronomical contents of the Anthology [expanded from MAY, p. 37, ad al-Afdal (no. 18)]:
1 There are numerous passages and tables taken from the Kitâb al-Mabâdi' wa-'l-ghâyât fî 'ilm al-mîqât, "An A to Z of Astronomical Timekeeping", by the late-13th-century Cairo astronomer Abû 'Alî al-Marrâkushî (see now my article "al-Marrâkushî" in EI2). This important work is now available in facsimile edition (Frankfurt), in addition to the well-known studies of the Sédillots père et fils from the 19th century (repr. Frankfurt). It still awaits detailed study, but it has been exploited in the study of a later Egyptian work by Najm al-Dîn al-Misrî in Charette, Mathematical Instrumentation.2 There are various tables taken from the Mustalah Zîj, which was the most-widely used zîj in Mamluk Cairo, but which alas does not survive in its original form (King & Samsó, "Islamic Astronomical Tables", p. 50). On one of these see further below.
3 There are some tables taken from the extensive corpus of tables for timekeeping by the sun and the stars entitled Mir'ât al-zamân and compiled ca. 1300 for the latitude of Ta'izz by Abu 'l-'Uqûl (MAY, no. 9). The tables in this corpus are now analysed in King, SATMI, I-2.1.2, etc., and II-12.1. Furthermore, more information on the elusive author has been discovered (see Varisco, Yemeni Almanac, p. 13): he is Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Tabarî, the first teacher appointed by the Sultan al-Mu'ayyad to his new madrasa in Ta'izz.
4 Some geographical tables attributed to the late-12th-century Syrian astronomer Ibn al-Dahhân are all that survives from that author. See now King, SATMI, II-9.1.
5 Some tables are attributed to Ibn al-Mushrif (MAY, no. 12), who may be identical with a 14th-century Egyptian astronomer with that name. See further King, SATMI, I-9.8, etc., and II-6.15.
6 Some planetary tables are stated to be from the Kitâb al-Shams al-Harîrî, presumably a zîj by one Shams al-Dîn al-Harîrî, otherwise unknown and not yet identified.
7 Other tables are taken from the Yemeni Muzaffarî Zîj of al-Fârisî (see King, MAY, no. 6.3, and King & Samsó, "Islamic Astronomical Tables", p. 52).
8 Other tables are taken from the Iranian Îlkhânî Zîj of Nasir al-Dîn al-Tûsî (see King & Samsó, "Islamic Astronomical Tables", p. 46).
9 An almanac displaying various spherical astronomical functions for each day of the solar year is introduced in the name of al-Afdal himself but the same almanac occurs in the Berlin manuscript of the Mir'ât al-zamân of Abu 'l-'Uqûl (see above). Information is available in Varisco, Yemeni Almanac.
10 A short treatise of one page attributed to al-Afdal deals with a celestial sphere that he made in 776 H [= 1374]. Alas, all other traces of this instrument have disappeared and it is not mentioned in Savage-Smith, Islamic Globes.
11 A table displaying the solar longitude for each day of the year is stated to have been compiled by al-Afdal in 777 H [= 1375/76].
12 A short treatise on the astrolabe is attributed to the Rasulid Sultan al-Mu'ayyad (MAY, no. 10); this is not known from other sources.
I concluded my first description 20 years ago with words that are still valid:
"A more detailed description of the contents of this manuscript would obviously be worthwhile, but the need for investigations of the works of al-Marrâkushî, the Egyptian Mustalah Zîj, and the Yemeni Muzaffarî and Mukhtâr Zîjes, is more urgent."
In my 1983 book, I identified two Yemeni ephemerides (taqwîm, pl. taqâwîm) for the years 727 H [= 1326/27] and 808 H [= 1405/06], unique of their genre (MAY, nos. 11 and 22). We have only fragments of similar works preserved in a citation by al-Bîrûnî and leaves from the Cairo Geniza.
• A detailed investigation of these ephemerides is in preparation as a doctoral thesis by Michael Hofelich of Frankfurt: see already his article "TAKWÎM" in EI2.
I also pointed to the importance of certain early Yemeni works on folk astronomy for our understanding of aspects of Islamic ritual. We note the following more recent and other imminent publications
Some non-Yemeni materials on mathematical astronomy preserved in Yemeni sources have also been studied:
• A list of 13 observations made in Qûs and Alexandria reported in the zîj of the 13th-century Yemeni astronomer Muhammad ibn Abî Bakr al-Kawâshî (MAY, no. 7): see now King with Owen Gingerich, repr. in King, Studies, A-VII.• The mathematical structure and the mode of compilation of a highly-sophisticated lunar table has been explained with the help of another table preserved in the Anthology and a remark by al-Afdal on its provenance (see King, Studies, A-V).
Considerable research has been conducted in recent years on astronomical instrumentation (see King, "Instrument Website"). In particular, progress has been made on the history of astronomical instrumentation in the Yemen. One astrolabe made by the Sultan al-Ashraf (MAY, no. 8) in 690 H [= 1291] has been preserved for us and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Also, his treatise on the construction of astrolabes, sundials, and the magnetic compass has been studied furthe
• A detailed description of al-Ashraf's astrolabe, also drawing on his treatise on instrumentation, has been published: see King, Studies, B-II.• Another Yemeni astrolabe, also of Rasulid provenance but undated and unsigned, has been identified in a collection at Harvard University. A description has been made but is not yet published.
• Al-Ashraf's treatise also contains the earliest description of a magnetic compass bowl in which the needle floats on water or some liquid. His text, together with a contemporaneous text from Cairo on a dry compass, is now published: see Schmidl, "Compass".
In conclusion, much has been done on the history of Yemeni astronomy in the past 30 years, but not enough. There is still much more to be done, but the field is vast and the number of workers few indeed. al-Afdal and his modern editors have contributed substantially to our endeavours.
King & Julio Samsó, "Islamic Astronomical Tables"
Savage-Smith, Emilie, Islamic Globes
Schmidl, Petra,
Selin, H. ed., Astrononomy across Cultures
van Dalen, Benno, "Website"
Varisco, Daniel M.
Varisco, Yemeni Almanac
Varisco & Smith, eds., al-Afdal's Anthology
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