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Thabit ibn Qurra

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Astronomer

The Resume

    (836-901)
    Born in Harran, Iraq
    Birth name was Al-Ṣābi Thābit ibn Qurra al-Ḥarrānī
    Arabic Sabian mathematician, physician, translator, and astronomer
    Worked as a money changer in Harran before being discovered by Muhammad Ibn Musa, of the famed Banu Musa
    Employed, along with fellow scholar Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, in Baghdad by the Banu Musa as 'full-time' translators
    Lived during the Islamic Golden Age in the second half of the Abbasid Caliphate (around the 9th Century)
    Credited with 80 extant manuscripts, containing important discoveries in algebra (29), geometry (29), medicine (2), mineralogy (1), music (2), physics (1), zoology (1), and astronomy (29)
    Translated from Greek into Arabic the works of Apollonius, Archimedes, Euclid and Ptolemy
    Translated from both Greek and Syriac to Arabic Nichomachus' 'Introduction to Arithmetic,' Euclid's 'Elements,' and Ptolemy's 'Almagest'
    Single extant work on mysticism, Kitab al-Hiyal (Book on Indigenous Manners), survives only in Medieval Latin translations, 'De Prestigious' (On Magic) or 'De Imaginibus' (On Images)
    Namesake for the Thabit number, also known as the 321 number

Why he might be annoying:

    Only a few of his written treatises have been preserved in their original form.
    He wrote a book on a subject many would consider 'Talismanic voodoo' by modern standards.
    Francis Bacon identified him as a Christian in his writings when he wasn't one.
    In fact, he's usually grouped as being among the great, enlightened Muslim scholars, but he never even converted to Islam.
    Rather, he was raised in an ancient Sabean 'astral cult' which worshipped the sun, moon, and five known planets as gods, and would remain a devout follower of the faith his entire life.
    He was credited with the spreading of the sciences of alchemy and the occult through Spain and the Christian West (mainly through his grandchildren).
    The disproved 'trepidation theory' which theorized that the equinoxes of the heavens moved 'back and forth' as opposed to in a circular rotation is attributed to him (although Theon of Alexandria wrote about it first).
    Historians believe that he may have been the prototype-model for the evil 'Moor' sorcerer who sought Aladdin's magic lamp in the legend (he was in Baghdad at the time the 'One Thousand and One Nights' was recorded).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was among the earliest reformers of the Ptolemaic system.
    He discovered an equation for determining amicable numbers.
    He is the namesake for a lunar crater located on the southeast shore of Moon's mare nubium.
    His treatises on astronomy and mathematics were extremely influential in both Arabic and Medieval European science.
    He was the most famous scientist of his time, renowned for both his knowledge in magic and in mathematics.
    He is credited with transmitting both Mesopotamian astronomy and Hellenistic Alexandria's rational science to Baghdad and the Islamic world as a whole.
    He calculated an early form of Game Theory, involving the exponentials of a chessboard, over three centuries before it would be commonly documented.
    He broke ground by extending the theory of numbers' use to describe the ratios between geometrical quantities, something not even the scholars of Ancient Greece considered doing.
    He rejected Aristotle's notion of a 'natural place' for each element, instead proposing a theory of motion in which both the upward and downward motions are caused by weight.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


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