Inscribed by the publisher: the first printed edition of Abu al-Hasan al-Marrakushi

Marrakushi, Abu 'Ali al-Hasan ibn 'Ali ibn 'Umar al- / Sédillot, Jean-Jacques Emmanuel (transl.). [Jami' al-mabadi' wa'l-ghayat fi 'ilm al-miqat - French]. Traité des instruments astronomiques des Arabes composé au treizième siècle par Aboul Hhassan Ali.

€ 25,000.00

The first publication in any language of the most complete work on Islamic astronomical instruments to have survived from the medieval period. Translated into French by the astronomer and self-styled orientalist Jean Jacques Sédillot (1777-1832), the work was published posthumously by his son, Louis-Pierre-Eugène Amélie Sédillot, who has inscribed this copy: "A Monsieur Dureau de La Malle, Membre de l'Institut", signed, "L. Am. Sédillot". The recipient, Adolphe Dureau de la Malle (1777-1857), was a contemporary of Sédillot's father, and himself an established historian and geographer who published on the topography and agriculture of ancient Rome. Both men were precursors to what would become the modern study of the history of science: a field with medieval Arabic texts at its heart.

The original author of this particular Arabic text, Abu Ali al-Hassan al-Marrakushi, was a widely respected late 13th century Moroccan academic who advanced astronomy and mathematics, especially trigonometry. He wrote on each of these topics in the work translated here, under its original title "Jami' al-mabadi' wa'l-ghayat fi 'ilm al-miqat" ("Collection of the Principles and Objectives in the Science of Timekeeping"). It is the most famous section of this work - that on the use and creation of astronomical instruments - which is preserved in Sédillot's translation. The numerous lithographed plates included at the end of the text, following in centuries of manuscript tradition, are a particularly important inclusion.