LES CAHIERS DU MIDEO

-1-

De Zenon d 'Elee a Poincare

~

Recueil d 'etudes
en hommage a Roshdi Rashed

edite par

Regis MORELON et Ahmad HASNAWI

EDITIONS PEETERS

Louvain - Paris
2004
ARISTOTELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY

George SALIBA

INTRODUCI'ION

The most dynamic confrontation Arabic astronomy had to face was

that which it had with the inherited Greek astronomical tradition as repre-
sented by the Ptolemaic formulation of that astronomy. Not only did that
confrontation bring forth basic observational problems that had to be
attended to by astronomers working within the Islamic civilization, and
thus produced a whole set of corrective methods, and results that expun-
ged the erroneous observational results of Greek astronomy. But it also
raised various foundational questions: some having to do with the nature
of the confrontation itself in the sense that it was a confrontation between
two cultural perspectives, while others having to do with foundational
issues within Greek astronomy itself. All this created genuine problems
for the practicing astronomer, and the resulting dynamic relationship led
to the creation of a new Arabic astronomy that was although based on
Greek astronomical tradition, and organically related to it, still critical of
it on a whole variety of issues.
In order to appreciate the difficulties faced by astronomers working
in the Islamic middle ages, and the various implications of these difficul-
ties, -it is important therefore to review very quickly the Aristotelian
premises that constituted the foundations of Ptolemaic astronomy and
were the main issues raised by the said confrontation. The reason for
doing that is simple enough. Aristotelian philosophical premises laid the
foundation for what can be called an Aristotelian astronomy that was
poorly articulated in the various of works of Aristotle, but mainly in the
De caelo, Meteorologica, and the Metaphysics, and led to the formation
of a cosmological world view that was in turn adopted by Ptolemy for his
own formulation of Ptolemaic astronomy. This resulting Ptolemaic astro-
nomy turned out to be the most influential astronomy in medieval Islamic
times as we have just said.
252 George SALIBA

In this limited space, it will not be possible to render a comprehensive

account of Aristotelian astronomy or cosmology, but, for the purposes of
the discussion that follows, just reminding the reader of the few salient
points of that cosmology should be in order. This form of presentation
also helps us set down the context in which Arabic astronomy had to
confront its Greek counterpart and the struggle that ensued as a result of
that confrontation.
To start with, the Aristotelian arrangement of the celestial spheres, as
it was argued in the De caelo, proved the existence of a fixed point at the
center of the celestial sphere, which was identified as occupying the same
space as the earth.I As was formulated by Aristotle, the argument had
little to do with the Aristotelian element earth itself, or the earth that we
live on, but more to do with the geometric necessity of having a fixed axis
around which a sphere would move in place at uniform speed, and a fixed
point at the center around which the whole sphere would rotate. The fact
that the heavy element earth also turned out to be at that center was just
an added bonus.
One could therefore say that it was rather a convenient arrangement
that our earth turned out to be at the middle of that large sphere called the
universe. And to put it differently, if there had not been an earth,
Aristotle's argument would require the existence of such an earth and
would require that it would be placed at rest at the center of the cosmos.2
Secondly, the conceptual need for other spheres, each made respon-
sible for a planet in specific, resulted from the observable varying
motions of the individual planets. Aristotle had to argue that those other
spheres had to be nested within each other in such a way that they must all
have common motion, producing day and night and all that goes with it,
as well as individual motions differentiating the motions of the individual
planets. 3 Aristotle argued most cogently, that they all had to have com-
mon motions because they all partook of the element aether, which is the
element of the heavens and which was endowed with an eternal circular
motion particular to it. And on the other hand the spheres had to have
their own particular motions in order to account for their individual

I Cf. A ristotle on the Hea vens (hereafter De caelo ), Translation by

W. K. C. Guthrie, Cambridge (Mass), reprint. 1960, pp. 24lf. Cf. also pages 149-151,
where he says: "[ ... ] when a body revolves in a circle some part of it must remain still,
namely that which is at the center[ ...]".
2 Cf., e.g. "It follows that there must be earth, for it is that which remains at rest in
the middle" (De caelo II 3, p. 151).
3 Cf. De caelo II 7, pp. 203f.
 ARISTOTELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY 253

behavior as exhibited by the planets that they carry, like forward and
retrograde motions, as well as stationary positions that each of the planets
exhibits with the exception of the moon and the sun. The more the
Aristotelian heaven was elaborated in the De caelo, and later in the
Metaphysics (book Lamda in particular) the more the interrelated
motions of the celestial spheres became chaotic, to say the least, and
quickly ran out of control.
Thirdly, there was the Aristotelian argument that distinguished
between two kinds of motions, on the basis of which the supralunar
region was distinguished from the sublunar region. 4 In the sub lunar
world of Generation and Corruption, linear motion, which had its own
contraries, was responsible for the coming to be and passing away of all
the phenomena of change that we see around us. In the celestial region,
however, the spheres, with their aetherial constitution, partook only of
the circular motion, and there was no linear motion, nor contrary
motions, to produce any decay. Thus the celestial region remained eternal
and consistent.
Fourthly, there was the problem of the individual motions of the
celestial spheres. The only way they could be accounted for was to assume
that the spheres had their own intellects, and that they partook of a volun-
tary motion, very much like animal motion, where the animal sphere
could by its own volition move forward, retrograde, stop, etc, and still
remain eternal in the sense that it did not partake of the linear motions of
the world of generation and corruption.s

RESULTING ARISTOTELIAN ASTRONOMY

All these philosophical and cosmological doctrines had to be put into

practice in order to explain for example the particular motions of the
planets that we see every day. There is no one book in which Aristotle
attempted to do that. And the only effort he put into the subject was the
feeble attempt made in the Metaphysics (book Lamda).6 There he refers
the reader to the hypothesis of Eudoxus and Callippus, without any elabo-
ration, and assumes that if one could take a set of homocentric spheres,
and vary their axis, then one could reproduce the motions observed in the

4 Cf. De caelo I 2, pp. 11 f.

5 There are several references to the nature of the planetary motions in De caelo to
illustrate this point. It is sufficient to refer here to De caelo, pp. 143, 207, 209, 213, etc.
6 Metaphysics XIII 8, et passim.
254 George SALIBA

heavens, and thus save the phenomena. No amount of elaboration, exege-

sis and explanation, since Aristotle's time, has yet produced a coherent
statement of the proposed systems in the Metaphysics, in such a way that
one could derive tabular results from such arrangements that could tell us
the desired position of a planet at a proposed time.
The difficulties with the Aristotelian configuration, as proposed in the
Metaphysics, and the De caelo, suffered even more from elementary
contradictions that could not be easily explained away. Take, for example,
the problem of the constitution of the celestial spheres and the planets
themselves. They were all supposed to be made of the same element
aether, and yet we see the planets but we do not see the spheres.? Then
take the problem of the spontaneous motion of the planetary spheres
hinted to above, they were on the one hand free to move forward, stop,
retrograde, etc., by their own volition, but yet they were not supposed to
exhibit unpredictable behavior like the animals. All their wandering
motions were supposed to be predictable, hence susceptible to being des-
cribed with a geometric model that would allow the observer to predict
these strange "irregular" phenomena. And yet, at the same time, they
were supposed to be spontaneous, and move according to their own voli-
tion. It is this set of challenges that Claudius Ptolemy (fl. 150 AD)
attempted to solve in his magisterial works the Almagest and the
Planetary Hypothesis.

PTOLEMY'S AS1RONOMY

Without going into great details regarding the intricacies of Ptolemaic

astronomy,s I present it here as the first serious attempt at a working

7 On the composition of the stars and the spheres that carry them, see De caelo II 7.
Simplicius seems to argue that although the stars and the spheres are made of the same
fifth element, and participate in the same circular motion that only means that they are of
the same genus, but could be endowed with specific differences, in the same way as the
four sublunar e1ements who are different in the specifics but share the general quality of
linear motion. As we shall see, this distinction if accepted may allow for all sorts of other
speciations within the celestial genus. See a very fruitful and interesting discussion of this
aspect as well as other aspects of Aristotle's astronomy, Andrew Gregory, "Plato and
Aristotle on Eclipses," Journal for the History of Astronomy, 31, 2000, pp. 245-259.
8 The reader can be referred to the most general and sophisticated treatment of that
astronomy in Otto Neugebauer's, History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, New
York, 1975, pp. 1-256. Or see the more textbook-like presentation of planetary theory
 ARISTOTELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY 255

model of the Aristotelian speculations. Ptolemy too wanted to have uni-

form circular motion as the only motion befitting the celestial spheres,
and wanted to account for the celestial phenomena with either simple cir-
cular motions of single spheres, or a combination of uniform circular
motions resulting from the motions of several interrelated spheres. In
short he wished very much to put all of the Aristotelian hypothesis into
practice.
But as soon as he sat down to work, the difficulties faced began to sur-
face, and the impossibility of the project must have become quite apparent
to Ptolemy himself. Even the description of the solar model, the simplest
of all planetary models inherited by Ptolemy from Hipparchus (fl. c. 127
BC) and Apollonius (fl. c. 230 BC), was fraught with contradictions. Here
he had a simple phenomenon, i.e., the changing lengths of the seasons,
that had to be accounted for in Aristotelian terms. What was immediately
obvious was that the sun did not seem to be carried by a simple sphere,
· moving uniformly around us, and whose center coincided with the center
of the fixed earth, as Aristotle would have liked to have it. Had that been
the case, i.e. had Aristotle had his way, then all the seasons would be of
equal length, and the days would have the same length during the whole
year, and we would not be artificially creating summer and winter times
twice a year.
The fact that we had different seasons, as exhibited not only by drastic
variations in the weather in some parts of the earth, but also by the simple
difference in day lengths, meant that one should account for those varia-
tions, and still be able to provide a model that explained those phenomena
without having to give up on the Aristotelian circular motion of the
celestial spheres. All this would be fine if only it were doable.
After serious consideration of the observed phenomena and after an
equally serious consideration of the underlying premises, Ptolemy found
himself obliged to take his first step away from Aristotle, and thus violate
the very Aristotelian premises he explicitly promised to adhere to. In the
final analysis, and in Book III of the Almagest, Ptolemy proposed either
one of two models to explain the solar behavior. In order to generate the
"irregular" changes in the seasons, the sun either had to move around an
eccentric sphere, i.e. a celestial sphere whose center did not coincide with
the center of the fixed earth, or that it had to move around an epicycle
whose center in turn was carried by a concentric sphere. Ptolemy readily
admitted that this line of thought was not his, and that the problem had

that places Ptolemaic astronomy in context in James Evans, The History and Practice of
Ancient Astronomy, New York I Oxford, 1998, pp. 289-443.
256 George SALIBA

already been confronted before him. In particular, he actually admitted

that both models were known before and that Apollonius had even gone as
far as proving that they were mathematically equivalent. This in turn gave
the reader a choice as to which of the Aristotelian principles he wished to
violate. As for Ptolemy, he opted for the eccentric model, on account of
its sheer simplicity, and silently went on to accept the cosmological
conclusion of Apollonius and repeated the same proof of mathematical
equivalence between the two models. In that regard Ptolemy shifted the
problem from the cosmological discussion to a discussion of mathematical
modeling that allowed for the prediction of positions as stipulated by the
model. That attitude in itself gave rise to the subtle distinction, to be
exaggerated later, between the mathematical and the physical aspects of
Ptolemy's own astronomy. In essence then, the adoption of such an atti-
tude left the door open for people to argue that as long as the mathemati-
cal configuration explained the observed phenomena well enough, and
allowed the positions of the planets to be calculated for any time one plea-
sed, that would be in itself an achievement, irrespective of whether that
mathematical configuration adhered to the Aristotelian cosmological
principles or not.
Stated differently, each of the models proposed by Ptolemy violated
basic Aristotelian principles in one way or other. When one accepted the
eccentric model then he had to force a physical reality into the
Aristotelian scheme, and had to admit the existence of a center of heavi-
ness other than that of the earth. Needless to say, that reality would play
havoc with the whole Aristotelian arguments of the De caelo. If, on the
other hand, one admitted the existence of epicycles within the celestial
fabric-in such a way that those epicycles turned on their own centers,
i.e. on their own centers of heaviness-then that would mean that there
were various centers of heaviness in the universe, other than the earth,
and more particularly within the supposedly homogeneous realm of the
element aether. That would play havoc with the rest of the Aristotelian
cosmological conceptions of the celestial realm.
On this aspect of the argument, Ptolemy guarded his silence and did
not lean either way except to say, as we have already stated, that he pre-
ferred the eccentric model on account of its simplicity, presumably mea-
ning that it required only one motion while the epicyclic model required
two motions. Otherwise there is no clue as to how he thought about the
relationship of his astronomy to the Aristotelian presuppositions. All we
can say is that, as far as the sun was concerned, one could violate whiche-
ver Aristotelian principle one pleased. Ptolemy had given some form of
 ARIST01ELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC AS1RONOMY 257

license for that by repeating the Apollonian mathematical equivalence of

both violations.
But that was not all. And to make matters worse, all the remaining
models proposed by Ptolemy for the other planets offered no such choice,
for they all invariable included both, at least one eccentric as well as an
epicycle. And as if to drive absurdities even further he even included in
all the other planetary models a sphere that was supposed to move uni-
formly in place around an axis that did not pass through its center, thus
giving rise to what was later on called the problem of the equant.

AVERROES AND THE PTOLEMAIC PREDICAMENT

All these Ptolemaic contradictions and false attempts did not go unno-
ticed. Most astronomers, who paid any attention to Aristotelian cosmo-
logy had to confront them at one point or other. But the first person to
articulate them in real condemnatory terms was Averroes (d. 1198 AD)
who devoted some discussion of this very predicament of Ptolemy in his
own commentary on Book Lamda of Aristotle's Metaphysics. When he
came to discuss the astronomy of his own day, which was up till his time
mainly Ptolemaic in nature, Averroes had this to say: "to propose an
eccentric sphere or an epicyclic sphere is an extra-natural matter (amrun
khiirijun 'an al-tab')"9. By extra-natural Averroes seemed to imply that it
was untenable within the accepted Aristotelian physics. Furthermore,
Averroes went on to say:

The epicyclic sphere is in principle impossible (ghayru mumkinin a$lan), for the
body that moves in a circular motion has to move around the center of the universe
(markaz al-kull) and not outside it.IO

All this would have been probably excusable, if everything else that
was proposed by Ptolemy in that astronomy worked well. As it turned
out, all the ingenious techniques applied by Ptolemy to the various plane-
tary models, although they may have described the phenomena better than
the proposed concoctions of the Eudoxian models in Aristotle's
Metaphysics, they nevertheless could not be accounted for, in any shape
or form, if, at the same time, one were to satisfy the Aristotelian pre-

9 See Maurice Bouyges, S. J., Averroes Tafsir mii ba'd al-tabi'a, Bibliotheca
Arabica Scholasticorum, serie arabe, t. VII, Beirut, 1948, p. 1661.
10 Ibid .
258 George SALIBA

mises. That was probably the reason for the famous cry of Averroes in
the same commentary on book Lamda of the Metaphysics when he said:

The science of astronomy of our time contains nothing existent (laysa minhu shay' un
mawjudun), rather the astronomy of our time conforms only to computation, and not
to existence (hay' atun muwafiqatun li-al-/:lusban Ia li-al-wujUd) .ll

Taken together, this condemnation was pretty devastating. But we have

to remember that in comparison to what we now know about the other
attacks on Ptolemaic astronomy that were circulating within the Islamic
civilization, this criticism looks tempered in comparison. For although
A verroes' s critique was restricted to those specific philosophical aspects
of Ptolemy's astronomy, the other contradictions and absurdities did not
go unnoticed by other astronomers, and had their own share of devasta-
ting criticism as well. But for those more advanced critiques one has to
resort to the works of the mathematical astronomers who were not only
developing their own critiques of Ptolemy's astronomy, but were also
proposing their own alternative astronomy, each in his own way. The
limited confines of this space does not allow for such a foray. Instead our
focus, for the time being will remain on the philosophical aspects of
Ptolemy's astronomy and their impact on Arabic astronomy. The follow-
ing discussion will therefore be limited to those aspects only, and the
reader is invited to consult the other mathematical alternatives
elsewhere.I2
The only mathematical astronomer, this author knows of, who
attempted to come to the rescue of Ptolemy, so to speak, by responding to
A verroes' critique, in a specifically philosophical fashion, was Ibn al-
Shatir (d. 1375 AD) of Damascus. This does not mean that Ibn al-Shatir
was in agreement with Ptolemy on other issues. Not in the least, and now
we know that his other devastating attacks were quite insightful and so
general that they touched almost all aspects of Ptolemaic astronomy.

Ibid., p. 1664.
11
See George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories
12
During the Golden Age of Islam, New York, 1994, and more particularly, id., "Arabic
Planetary Theories After the Eleventh Century," in Roshdi Rashed (ed.) in collaboration
with Regis Morel on, Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3 vols., London,
1996, vol. 1, pp. 58-127.
 ARISTO'IELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY 259

IBN AL-SHATIR ON AVERROES VERSUS PTOLEMY

On the issue of the eccentrics and epicycles that form the brunt of
Averroes's critique of Ptolemy, at least as far as one could tell from the
statements just quoted, Ibn al-Shatir had to agree with A verroes on the
matter of the eccentric. In fact, all of Ibn al-Shatir' s alternative astro-
nomy is developed without any eccentrics, and was fully cognizant of the
need of keeping the earth at the center of the universe if one were to pay
any attention whatsoever to Aristotelian cosmological premises, which
were still the only accepted premises in pre-Renaissance astronomy. But,
as far as the epicycles were concerned that was another matter to Ibn al-
Shatir.
Without mentioning A verroes by name, Ibn al-Shatir approached the
subject in the following fashion. In his most influential work, the Nihiiyat
a/-siil fi ta$/:li/:l al-U$Ul (The Final Quest in Rectifying [astronomical]
Principles), obviously acknowledging in the title itself as well as in the
body of the work that there were other attempts that had preceded him on
the subject for his work to be the final, he had the following to say on the
subject of epicycles:

the existence of small spheres like the epicyclic spheres, which do not encompass the
earth, is not impermissible below the ninth sphere. The evidence for that is that since
there is a planet in each sphere, and there are many spherical stars in the eighth, each
of them larger than some of the epicycles of the planets, and since the star is different
(in constitution) from the body of the sphere, then the existence of epicyclic spheres
and the like is not impermissible. This indicates as well that there is some composi-
tion in the spheres (tarkibun rna). The absolutely simple is the ninth, where it is not
possible to imagine a star or anything else.13

At an earlier point, Ibn al-Shatir had already argued against the per-
missibility of eccentric spheres, thus agreeing with Averroes as was just
noted.
Ibn al-Shatir's project was then not to reconstruct Ptolemaic astro-
nomy only, but to reinterpret the Aristotelian premises, and to save
Aristotle from himself, so to speak. For as we have noted earlier,
Aristotle had no information whatsoever on the admissibility of having
planets and their carrying spheres be made of the same element aether,

13 Author's own critical edition of this work of Ibn al-Shatir (not yet published),
pp. 12-13. For the manuscript version refer to ms . Oxford, Bodleian, Marsh 139,
fol. 4v.
260 George SALIBA

and yet we see the planet and we do not see the sphere.J4 What Ibn al-
Shatir was doing in this remark was to allow the Aristotelian universe to
begin strictly at the ninth sphere, but to have the lower spheres admit
some form of composition. This would be more in tandem with
Aristotle's arguments in the Meteorologica which seemed to imply some
form of impurities in the element aether (thus tarkibun mii in Ibn al-
Shatir's language) as one approached the lunar sphere descending from
above. 15
If that composition is allowed to exist, as both Aristotle and Simplicius
seemed to imply, in order to account for the obvious existence of visible
stars in transparent invisible spheres, then Aristotle will have to allow for
the existence of epicycles as being of the same type of composition as the
stars themselves, and hence need not contain a center of heaviness, as
A verroes had required.
All this was not developed by Ibn al-Shatir any further, because his
main concern in this treatise was to attend to the development of geome-
tric models that could predict the planetary positions without having to
follow Ptolemy in assuming the more serious contradictions with the
Aristotelian premises such as the assumptions regarding the concepts of
equants, prosthephaeresis, epicyclic slantings, inclinations and the like.
For our purposes, we should note that these mathematical astronomers,
such as Ibn al-Shatir were still concerned to make some sense out of the
Greek Ptolemaic astronomy that they had inherited, and had to insist that
it at least be consistent with the Aristotelian premises upon which it was
based. At least in as much as Aristotle was consistent with himself.

ARISTOTLE AND THE VOLUNTARY MOTION OF THE SPHERES

As was already noted there was yet another problem with the
Aristotelian account of the heavens, namely, that the planetary spheres
seemed to exhibit individual motions, and those motions seemed to be cau-
sed by their own volition, and yet they were supposed to exhibit predic-
table motions in that their individual motions should result from a combi-
nation of spherical motions that 'force' them to exhibit the motions that
they do exhibit. No astronomer that I know of ever took Aristotle to task
on this very point. But during the discussion of the inadequacies of

See the objection and commentary of Simplicius noted above.

14
Meteorologica I 3, 340b, 5ff, cited by Gregory, "Plato and Aristotle on
15
Eclipses," p. 247.
 ARISTOTELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY 261

Ptolemaic astronomy, taken to be the best representative configuration of

the Aristotelian intentions as we also said before, two astronomers had
something to say on the subject.
The first is the Damascene astronomer Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Un;li
(d. 1266) who questioned, in two separate places, the adequacy of the
Ptolemaic model for the upper planets, with all its contradictions and
complexities. At one point he came close to questioning the very founda-
tions of the Aristotelian premise when he questioned the need for a series
of spheres to be postulated, in the fashion adopted by Ptolemy, if one
were to endow the spheres carrying those planets with a volition of their
own. If each of those spheres had its own volition, then how could one
predict its behavior, and worse yet predict the behavior of several spheres
moving together, each by its own volition, in order to produce the obser-
vable behavior of the planet?

If we were to admit for the mover of a planet to speed up and to slow down, then we
would have no need of constructing a configuration (hay' a), and his own astronomy
(hay' a) (i.e. Ptolemy's) would be in vain, and any assumption that a planet would
have more than one sphere would be an unnecessary excess, which is impossible.I6

'UrQi then went on to say at another point:

If this were so then the motions of the deferents will have to be irregular by them-
selves, sometimes speeding up and at other times slowing down. And that is impos-
sible according to the principles of this science ('ilm) [ ... ]If one were to admit these
kinds of impossibilities in this discipline ($ina' a), then it would all be baseless, and
it would have been sufficient to say that each planet has one concentric sphere only,
and any other eccentric or epicyclic sphere would be an unnecessary addition. I?

The fundamental question behind all these issues should be really

addressed to Aristotle, by asking, how could a planet, or even a sphere
carrying a planet, move by its own volition, i.e. forward, retrograde,
stop, etc., and still have a predictable motion as a result. The fact that
such a thing is not to be contemplated, i.e. erratic motion of the planets,
necessitates the production of an astronomy, such as that of Ptolemy, but
better yet one similar to it that could still meet the major Aristotelian
premise of uniform motion, and did not include the sheer physical
impossibilities stipulated by Ptolemy.

16 Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urgi, Kitab al-hay' a, ed. George Saliba, 2nd ed., Beirut,
1990, p. 212.
17 Ibid, p. 218.
262 George SALIBA

There is no doubt that astronomers like 'Ur<,li must have understood

the Aristotelian dilemma and must have opted for the more restricted
motion of the individual planetary spheres, where the volition of each of
those spheres must be regulated by the volitions of others in order to pro-
duce the predictable pattern. Those astronomers must have understood
Aristotle to say that it was not permissible that all the celestial phenomena
such as forward motion, retrograde, and stations could be attributed to
the whimsical will of the individual planetary spheres.
The second astronomer who raised another aspect of this same point
was the sixteenth century astronomer from Aleppo, Ghars al-Din ibn
Al)mad ibn Khalil al-I:Ialabi (d. 1563). His main work, which is not yet
published, was called Tanbih al-nuqqad 'ala rna fi al-hay' a al-mashhura
min al-fasad (Warning the Critics about the Corruption of the Prevailing
Astronomy, meaning of course the Ptolemaic astronomy). The very first
chapter of this treatise dealt with this same issue regarding the voluntary
motion of the individual spheres. Ghars al-Din argued that this motion
had to be either natural, thus predictable once its nature was determined,
like the linear motion of the elements or the circular motion of the celes-
tial bodies, or voluntary. He then went on to say that most philosophers
accepted the second option, that is the voluntary motion, because they
argued (from the contrary) that if it were natural then the same body
would, in its circular motion, move naturally away from a specific point
along the circle while at the same time would be seeking that very point.
Hence it would have naturally contradicting directions of motion, which
was impossible. Therefore the motion must be voluntary. Ghars al-Din
argued that this need not be so, and that the body could be defined as
moving in a circular motion without being able to come to a stop. For he
correctly observed that the same objection could be raised against the
voluntary motion, for how could then one body want and not want the
same thing. Moreover, he went on to say, if we accepted the voluntary
motion, then

where would the need be for the particular spheres that you (meaning the Ptolemaic
astronomers) have posited, which you have up till now failed to correct, with all the
contrivances and circumventions implied by them. Let us then say that each planet
has one sphere that moves by its own volition, sometimes speeding up, other times
slowing down, becomes stationary, moves forward, and retrogrades, etc. What adds
to its being natural is the fact that it follows a specific pattem.IS

18 Ms. Istanbul, Yeni Jami', 1181, fol. 148r.

 ARISTOTELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY 263

Ghars al-Din was not in the business of proposing a solution for the
philosophical contradiction built into the Aristotelian premise, rather he
only wished to point it out, for, by his time, it had become part of the
inherited and famous astronomy. The rest of Ghars al-Din's treatise deals
with other similar issues that could not be all dealt with in this limited
space. Suffice to say here that such philosophical problems as the ones that
bedeviled Aristotelian cosmology, and Ptolemaic astronomy thereafter
continued to exert their influence on Arabic-writing astronomers well
into the sixteenth century if not after.

ARISTOTLE'S CATEGORIES OF MOTION

Finally we come to the issue of the nature of motion itself. We have

already seen that Aristotle divided motion into two major categories: the
celestial circular motion and the sublunar linear motion. This division
constitutes one of the cardinal dogmas of Aristotelian cosmology. In fact,
this division is so essential at so many junctures. It was used, or example,
to define the principle of generation and corruption as resulting from
contrary linear motions, and was also used to define the nature of the
celestial bodies by positing for them an independent permanent circular
motion. In contrast to linear motion, circular motion was defined as
having no contraries, despite the fact that a planet departed from the same
point to which it was heading, as we have just seen. And because the
celestial circular motion had no contraries that meant that the celestial
bodies were never generated nor corrupted. As for leaving a point when
the planet was indeed heading for it, that concept was taken to be part of
the definition of a circle, and did not constitute contrary behavior as in
the case of linear motion, which was defined as opposite in direction.
To stress this point further, reference could be made to at least one
example, out of many, in which Aristotle argued for this notion of sepa-
rating circular motion from rectilinear motion. In the Physics (262 a 14-
15), Aristotle argued that rectilinear motion was further defined as dis-
continuous, in contradistinction to circular motion. In his own words:
"that rectilinear motion cannot be continuous is most evident from the
fact that the object must stop before turning back." 19

I9 Physics VIII 8, 262a 14-15. For the implications of this statement see,
Hippocrates Apostle, Aristotle 's Physics, Grinnell (Iowa), 1980, pp. 171 , 330, et
passim.
 264 George SALIBA

Within the Islamic civilization, this point first caught the attention of
the philosophers, as far as this author can tell. For in his restatement of
the Physics, Abii al-Barakat al-Baghdadi (d. 1152) devoted a full chapter
in his book al-Mu 'tabar, to this very issue.2o In this chapter Abii al-
Barakat was concerned with the debate between Plato and Aristotle on this
issue, namely, whether there was a moment of rest between the ascending
and the descending stone. But in the context of his argument for conti-
nuous motion, even for objects that go up and down Abii al-Barakat
referred to an earlier person, simply called ba'r;l al-fur;lala' (one of the
notables) who proposed to demonstrate the continuity of motion, despite
the change in direction, by the following example. He said: take a ruler,
drill a hole in its middle, pass a thread though it and attach a plumb line
to its end. Hold the other end of the thread with your hand and stretch it
to one end of the ruler. Then as you move your hand continuously along
the edge of the ruler (from one end to the other), the plumb line will cor-
respondingly go continuously down, as the hand approached the middle,
and up, as the hand receded away from it, without coming to rest. For it
was your hand which allowed the plumb line to move continuously as the
hand moved along the edge of the ruler, and neither the hand nor the
plumb line came to rest.
Although Abii al-Barakat was attempting to side with Plato, against
Aristotle, in this chapter, the example he gave could be understood to
mean that he also had doubts regarding the validity of the contrary
motions discussed by Aristotle as a basis for determining other results
such as generation and corruption. The opposite motions of the plumb
line demonstrably resulted from the continuous motion of the hand in one
direction. So how could they be contraries when their cause was
unidirectional?
With the astronomers, this issue came up again at a very interesting
juncture. While trying to reform Ptolemaic astronomy, the thirteenth-
century astronomer, Na~ir al-Din al-Tiisi (d. 1274) proposed a mathema-
tical theorem, now known in the literature as the Tiisi Couple. In it al-
Tiisi argued that one could allow the radius of a deferent sphere to be
conceived of as an expanding and shrinking line, by attaching to its
extremity two spheres, internally tangent at one point, and one of them
half the size of the other. Then if the larger sphere were allowed to move
in place uniformly at any speed and the smaller sphere moved also in
place in the opposite direction at twice that speed, then the original point

?.- 20 Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi, Kitiib al-Mu'tabar, 3 vols., Hyderabad, 1938, vol.
~chapter 24, pp. 94-103.
 ARISTOTELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY 265

of tangency would move up and down along the diameter of the larger
sphere, thus producing simple linear and oscillating motion as a result of
two simple uniform circular motions; a situation not too different from
the motion of the plumb line in Abu al-Barakat's example. Then the ori-
ginal condition sought by al-Tiisi could be met if one allowed the diame-
ter of the larger sphere to be placed along the tip of the deferent radius
thus allowing it to expand and contract by the combined circular motion
of the two spheres. In effect, what this theorem did was to describe the
production of oscillating linear motion as a result of continuous circular
motion, and vice versa.
Once that theorem was discovered by al-Tiisi, its manifold revolutio-
nary character was immediately realized and appreciated. First it confir-
med, as in Abu al-Barakat's example, that oscillating motion could be
derived from continuous motion. More so, the same oscillating motion, in
this case, could be also derived from continuous circular motion.
Furthermore, the theorem asserted that the linear motion could also be
continuous, with no need to come to rest, since the circular motion cau-
sing it was also continuous. And most importantly, this theorem also des-
troyed the distinction between circular and linear motion in one full
swoop. In effect it said, that linear motion could also be produced in the
celestial region as a result of simple uniform circular motion.
AI-Tiisi did not push this philosophical issue any further, and did not
even hint to its implications. In fact, it was the late Willy Hartner among
the modem scholars who was the first to draw attention to this important
merging of the two Aristotelian worlds in Tiisi's theorem. He argued that
this very theorem demonstrated that "the dogmatic belief in the essential
difference between the terrestrial and the celestial worlds, becomes ques-
tionable if not invalid."2J Later Hartner argued that this same theorem,
which was also used by Copernicus, must have been borrowed from al-
Tiisi, because the proof of the theorem by both men had the same alpha-
betic letters referring to the same geometric points.22 Hartner was how-
ever wrong, as we shall soon see, in arguing that neither al-Tiisi nor any
of his commentators had noted the revolutionary character of the theo-
rem, meaning the philosophical implications of translating circular
motion to rectilinear motion and vice versa.

21 Willy Hartner, Oriens Occidens ll, Hildesheim, 1984, p. 273.

22 Willy Hartner, "Copernicus, the Man the Work, and its History," Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society, vol. 117, no. 6, 1973, pp. 413-422, esp.
p. 421.
266 George SALIBA

Al-Tiisi's student, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 1311 AD), did not miss
this point when he commented on one of the works of his teacher, the
Tadhkira in which this theorem was formally proposed. Al-Shirazi men-
tioned the theorem very briefly first in a commentary which he called
Nihiiyat al-idriik fi diriiyat al-afliik,23 but then returned to it in greater
details in another commentary which he wrote on the same work of al-
Tiisi and called al-Tu/:zfa al-shiihiyya.24 After introducing Tiisi's theorem
in the Tubfa, together with its proof, al-Shirazi went on to say the
following:

This could be used as a proof for the absence of rest between two motions, one
going up and one going down. This is obvious. And the one who asserts that there
must be rest between the two motions cannot deny the possibility of such motions by
the celestial bodies simply because he believes there must be rest and rest is not pos-
sible for the celestial objects. This is so because we shall use it whenever there is an
ascending motion and a descending one as we shall see in the forthcoming discus-
sion. We couldn't be blamed if we also used it to disprove that principle [i.e. the
Aristotelian principle of rest between two opposing motions], as can be witnessed
from observation. For if we drill a hole in the bottom of a bowl whose edge is circu-
lar, but of unequal height above its base, and if we pass a thread through the hole
and attach a heavy object to it. Then if we move the other edge of the taut thread
along the edge of the bowl, the heavy object will descend and ascend on account of
the variation in the height of the bowl' s edge, in spite of the fact that it does not come
to rest because the mover does not come to rest by assumption.25

Another commentator on both Tiisi's as well as al-Shirazi's works, by

the name of Shams al-Din al-Khafri (d. 1550) also noted the problem.
But he took issue with the comment of al-Shirazi, and in a very obscure
passage attempted to prove that the resulting motion of al-Tiisi's Couple
was simply that of ascending and descending, and should not be construed
as simple harmonic motion. In addition, he said that the results of the
theorem did not actually contradict the Aristotelian assertion for "nothing
is proved by this theorem except the ascending and the descending as
resulting from circular motions in the same fashion (ji nafs al-amr). It
also produced an apparent rectilinear motion, not the rectilinear motion

23 Although Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi's Nihiiyat al-ldriik has survived in several

copies, it has not yet been published. Reference is made here to one such copy in Turkey,
Kopriilii 957, fols. 47V-48•.
24 This work of al-Shiriizi has also survived in several copies, and has not yet been
published as well. The manuscript used for this study is that of the Bibliotheque nationale
of Paris, arabe 2516.
25 Ibid., fol. 28r.
 ARISTOTELIAN COSMOLOGY AND ARABIC ASTRONOMY 267

which inclined towards linearity (yalzamuha al-mayl bi-al-istiqiima).

Aristotle's statement is only in regard to the motion which is linear by
itself."26 Then he went on to offer a mathematical proof that the resulting
linear motion was not a simple continuous motion.
What al-Khafri seemed to be saying at that point, is that although this
theorem demonstrated the production of linear motion as a result of cir-
cular motion, it did not demonstrate that the linear motion retained the
same speed at all times like the circular motion. And although one could
argue that the linear opposing motions were not interrupted by moments
of rest, nevertheless the resulting linear motion had to slow down at times
and speed up at other times, conditions that could not be easily transferred
to the celestial bodies without further modification. The distinction he
drew between the apparent linear motion and the one that "inclined
towards linearity" seems to explain a subtle difference in the concept of a
simple linear translational motion and the one that results from the natu-
ral inclination of the objects that Aristotle was talking about. When
Aristotle described the motion of earth towards the center and fire in the
opposite direction towards the circumference, he meant those motions not
simply as contraries, although they were indeed so, but as belonging to
the natural inclination of the elements themselves, and thus have to be
conceived differently from the linear motion involved in the translation
of an object from point A to point B.

CONCLUSION

The preceding discussion should leave no doubt about the importance

of the Aristotelian philosophical ideas to both the philosophers and the
astronomers alike. The principles embedded in the Aristotelian cosmo-
logy, with all their inner contradictions and problems that were already
noted and commented upon by the early commentators such as Simplicius
and Alexander of Aphrodisias, continued to exert great influence on the
research that went on during the heyday of the Islamic civilization. The
remarkable facility with which Arabic-writing astronomers discussed
those philosophical issues demonstrates as well their full acquaintance
with the Aristotelian foundations of Ptolemaic astronomy, and explains, to

26 The work of Shams al-Din al-Khafri, called al-Takmilafi sharf:z al-tadhkira, has
also survived in several copies, and has not yet been published as well. The manuscript
copy used for this study is that of the Syrian National Library, Maktabat al-Asad
(previously Z:ahiriyya), 6727, p. 187.
268 George SALIBA

a great extent, their continuous attempts to produce a better astronomy

that did not suffer from the same contradictions and absurdities the
Ptolemaic astronomy suffered from.
But more importantly this discussion should also put in doubt at least
the false distinction that has been maintained in the literature since the
times of Leon Gauthier27 about the existence of two types of rebellions
against Ptolemaic astronomy, one western represented by Averroes and
his predecessors, dubbed philosophical, and one eastern represented by
the Maragha astronomers and their followers, dubbed as mathematical. In
the above cited arguments we clearly see astronomers and philosophers,
from both sides of the Mediterranean arguing vehemently against these
philosophical contradictions in Ptolemaic astronomy and the Aristotelian
cosmology upon which it rested.

27 See L. Gauthier, who was the first to articulate this distinction in his "Une
reforme du systeme astronomique de Ptolemee tentee par les philosophes arabes du XIIe
siecle," Journal Asiatique, 1Qe ser., vol. 14, 1909, pp. 483-510, later followed by
'Abd al-l:lamid Sabra, without acknowledgement, in Sabra's "Andalusian Revolt Against
Ptolemaic Astronomy," in Everett Mendelsohn (ed.), Transformation and Tradition in
the Sciences, Cambridge, 1984, pp. 133-153, and a discussion of the problem in
George Saliba, "Critiques of Ptolemaic Astronomy in Islamic Spain," al-Qantara, 20,
1999, pp. 3-25.