Al-Qabisi


Abu al-Saqr Abd al-Aziz ibn Uthman ibn Ali al-Qabisi, generally known as Al-Qabisi, ', and sometimes known as Alchabiz, Abdelazys, Abdilaziz'', was a muslim astrologer, astronomer and mathematician.

Life

Originally from Qabisa in Iraq, Alchabitius later went to Aleppo where he worked for and lived in the palace of Sayf al-Dawla. He died in 967.

Work

Al-Qabisi is best known for his treatise on judicial astrology, Introduction to the Art of Judgments of the Stars. This was dedicated to the Emir of Aleppo, Prince Sayf al-Dawla, and survives in at least twenty-five Arabic manuscripts, and over two hundred manuscripts of its Latin translation, with twelve printed editions of the Latin work between 1473 and 1521. The Arabic text has received at least three Latin translations, which attracted several commentaries and were, in turn, translated into other European languages. In the 12th century it was translated by Johannes Hispalensis. In 1512 it was published by Melchiorre Sessa in Venice. The 1473 copy, and others up until 1521, features writing about Al-Qabisi by John of Saxony.
Al-Qabisi wrote a modest book on arithmetic, "Risala fi anwâ' al-‘adad", in which he discusses Euclid's perfect numbers and how to form them, and Thābit ibn Qurra's theorem on amicable numbers.
Other works include: