BIBLIOS

Document type
Journal articles

Document subtype
Full paper

Title
Al-Mahri's Mir'at al-salak li-kurat al-aflak: A 16th-century Yemeni Navigator’s Reflections on Astronomical Knowledge

Participants in the publication
J Acevedo (Author)
Centro interuniversitáro da História das Ciências e Tecnologias
Unidade de I&D e Inovação
CIUHCT
I Bénard (Author)
Centro interuniversitáro da História das Ciências e Tecnologias
Unidade de I&D e Inovação
CIUHCT
E Staples (Author)

Summary
The sixteenth-century Yemeni navigator Sulayman al-Mahri is one of the two main Arab authors writing on maritime navigation in the Indian Ocean in the early modern and pre-modern periods. While he is generally known to have written five treatises on various aspects of the navigational sciences, he is also in fact the author of a sixth work, entitled Mir'at al-salak li-kurat al-aflak (Mirror of Travellers into the Heavenly Spheres). Unlike his other works, Mir'at al-salak is an introduction to astronomical concepts and practices that has previously been largely ignored by scholars on the subject. This article provides an introductory discussion of this text, situating it within its broader literary context, both within previous astronomical literature as well as the corpus of al-Mahri's other navigational works. It presents the ninth chapter of the work in particular in order to explore al-Mahri's familiarity with historical mathematical astronomical practices. Collectively, the work is an interesting textual example of the connection between navigational and mathematical astronomical knowledge.

Editor(s)
Anne Regourd


Institution
Centro interuniversitáro da História das Ciências e Tecnologias

Where published
Nouvelles Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen

Publication Identifiers
ISSN - 2727-5221



Document Identifiers
URL - http://www.cdmy.org/cmy/ncmy16_35.pdf

Keywords
history of science navigation astronomy Indian Ocean

Tags
Arabic astronomy

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