Oct 11, 2001 - Sale 1908

Sale 1908 - Lot 6

Price Realized: $ 3,910
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
ALBATEGNIUS [AL-BATTANI], MOHAMMED IBN JAFIR. De scientia stellarum liber. Cum aliquot additionibus Joannis Regionmontani.<> Woodcut text diagrams throughout. [16], 228, [4] pages, including engraved title. 4to, contemporary limp vellum, small imperfection in front joint; light dampstain in upper portion of front free endpaper and half-title, small wormhole through errata and license/colophon leaves at end affecting a few letters. (Bologna: heirs of Victorius Benatius, 1645)
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Second edition of the principal work of one of the greatest Arab astronomers (d. 929) in the only extant Latin version, composed in the 12th century by Plato of Tivoli and first published in 1537 in Nuremberg. "Among al-Battani's many . . . important achievements is his improvement of the moon's mean motion in longitude; his measurements of the apparent diameters of the sun and of the moon and their variation in the course of a year, or of an anomalistic month, respectively, from which he concludes that annular solar eclipses (impossible, according to Ptolemy) must be possible; and his new and elegant method of computing the magnitude of lunar eclipses . . . The indebtedness of Copernicus to al-Battani is well-known . . . Much more frequent references to him are found in Tycho Brahe's writings and in G. B. Riccioli's New Almagest; in addition, Kepler, and--only in his earliest writings--Galileo evidence their interest in al-Battani's observations" (DSB). DSB I, 507-16; Houzeau & Lancaster 1144; Sarton I, 585.<