QUTB AL-DIN AL-SHIRAZI

'Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi' (1236 – 1311) was a 13th century Persian scientist and astronomer from Shiraz, Iran.

Contents

Works

See also

References

Works

He and his master Nasir al-Din Tusi wrote critiques of the ''Almagest'' of Ptolemy. He also continued the optical studies of Alhazen. It was Qutb al-Din who first gave a correct explanation for the formation of the rainbow.
He produced two prominent works on astronomy - ''The Limit of Accomplishment concerning Knowledge of the Heavens'' (Nihayat al-idrak fi dirayat al-aflak) completed in 1281, and ''The Royal Present'' (Al-Tuhfat al-Shahiya) completed in 1284. Both presented his models for planetary motion, improving on Ptolemy's principles. ^[1] In his ''The Limit of Accomplishment concerning Knowledge of the Heavens'', he also discussed the possibility of heliocentrism.^[2]
Besides astronomy he wrote extensively on medicine, mathematics and "traditional" Islamic sciences.
Qutb al-Din was also a Sufi from a family of Sufis in Shiraz. He is famous for the commentary on Hikmat al-ishraq of Suhrawardi, the most influential work of Islamic Illuminist philosophy. Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi's most famous work is the 'Pearly Crown' (''Durrat al-taj li-ghurratt al-Dubaj''), written in Persian around AD 1306 (705 AH).

See also

★ List of Iranian scientists

References

1. Kennedy, E. S. - ''Late Medieval Planetary Theory'', Isis, Vol. 57, No. 3. (Autumn, 1966), pp. 365-378., The University of Chicago Press
2. A. Baker and L. Chapter (2002), "Part 4: The Sciences". In M. M. Sharif, "A History of Muslim Philosophy", ''Philosophia Islamica''.