Person: Al-Maghribi, Muhyi l&amp;#x27;din

Muhyi l'din al-Maghribi was a Spanish-born Islamic astronomer who is most famous for his work on trigonometry.

Muhyi l'din went to Maragha in 1258 as a guest of Hulegu.
Al-Tusi and Muhyi l'din were involved in the construction of an Observatory.
There is a unique manuscript by Muhyi l'din in which he lists precise observations made at the Maragha Observatory between 1262 and 1274.
Perhaps Muhyi l'din is most famous for his work on trigonometry.
In doing this work Muhyi l'din also found an approximate value for π which he compared with the bounds obtained by Archimedes using 96 inscribed and circumscribed polygons.
Muhyi l'din also considered the classical problem of doubling the cube which he approached by Hippocrates' method of finding two mean proportionals between two given lines.
Another important aspect of Muhyi l'din's work was the critical commentaries which he produced on some of the classic Greek works such as Euclid's Elements, Apollonius's Conics, Theodosius's Spherics, and Menelaus's Spherics.
A particularly important commentary by Muhyi l'din is that on Book XV of the Elements (which was not written by Euclid).
The original Arabic version of Book XV is lost but there are four surviving manuscripts containing Muhyi l'din's commentary on it.
We know that there was more than one version of the Arabic Book XV, for recently a Hebrew translation of Book XV has been discovered which has been translated from a different version to that which Muhyi l'din used for his commentary.

Born about 1220, Spain. Died about 1283, Maragha, Iran.

View full biography at MacTutor

Ancient Arab, Astronomy, Origin Spain

Epochs: 1

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

Person: Al-Maghribi, Muhyi l&amp;amp;#x27;din