Person: Jabir Ibn Aflah
Jabir ibn Aflah or Geber was an Spanish Islamic mathematician whose works were translated into Latin and so became available to European mathematicians.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Very little information is available regarding Jabir ibn Aflah's life.
- Moses Maimonides, whose Arabic name was Abu 'Imran Musa ibn Maymun ibn 'Ubayd Allah, was a Jewish philosopher, jurist, and physician who was born in Córdoba in 1135.
- These criticisms appears in Jabir ibn Aflah's most famous work Islah al-Majisti Ⓣ(Correction of the Almagest).
- One sees that ibn Aflah even puts his argument regarding errors made by Ptolemy into the title of the work.
- Ptolemy claimed that these planets could never be on a line between an observer on Earth and the sun., but ibn Aflah states that this is an error, and that Venus and Mercury are above the Sun.
- Both may be based on the work of Thabit ibn Qurra, or the work of ibn Aflah, Abu'l-Wafa, and Thabit ibn Qurra may all be based on some still unknown source.
- The influence of ibn Aflah is quite remarkable.
- In particular the author looks at his influence on the Persian astronomer Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, who was a pupil of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi; on the Hispano-Arabian philosopher ibn Rushd, who is often known as Averroes, was born in Córdoba in 1126 and integrated Islamic traditions and Greek thought; and on Levi ben Gerson (sometimes known as Gersonides).
- One of ibn Aflah's more infamous influences was on Regiomontanus who copied large parts of ibn Aflah's work in the fourth book of his publication De triangulis.
- Regiomontanus did not acknowledge that ibn Aflah was the source of the material and this caused Cardan to strongly criticise Regiomontanus.
Born about 1100, possibly Seville (now Spain). Died about 1160.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Ancient Arab, Astronomy, Origin Spain
Mentioned in:
Epochs: 1
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
