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The Second Revival of Astronomy in the Tenth Century and the Establishment of Astronomy as an Element of Encyclopedic Education

Abstract In the fourth/tenth century a great number of new intellectual centers appeared in the Islamic world, and an increase in the number of persons involved in production of written works on mathematics and astronomy took place. One such new center was Aleppo under the Ḥamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla. According to al-Qabīṣī the generosity of Sayf al-Dawla led to the situation that ignorant people pretended to be astronomers or astrologer. Therefore, al-Qabīṣī argued, exams should be established for testing the level of competence and the completeness of knowledge of a candidate. Al-Qabīṣī was engaged in teaching by giving lectures based on a textbook, the Fuṣūl of al-Farghānī. This was a novelty in teaching astronomy, since before memorizing didactic poems and operating with astronomical instruments was the preferred method. While al-Qabīṣī’s aim in teaching astronomy was to train future professional astronomers and astrologers, in other contexts astronomy was a propaedeutic subject as part of the quadrivium. The philosopher Muḥammad Ibn al-Haytham (not to be confused with the mathematician al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham) wrote a commentary of the Almagest, in which his intention was “to elucidate subtle ideas for the benefit of students”, and not to go into technical details of calculation. Obviously his aim was to educate future philosophers in the “philosophical sciences” (mathematics, natural sciences and metaphysics). Some generations earlier, al-Fārābī wrote a commentary on the Almagest with similar intentions. His preferred subject was the geometric proof, while observations and calculations were of little interest. Astronomy was incorporated into a curriculum of general scientific knowledge, – similar to the curriculum of the Alexandrian schools in late antiquity –, and ancient Greek texts on astronomy were preferred. This development was indeed a renaissance in the sense Jacob Burckhardt used the term.