A non-Ptolemaic Islamic star table in Chinese (Q2737631)

The present article is based on the latest state of knowledge concerning a very important but extremely difficult problem: the history of Chinese Islamic astronomy and its related textual basis, from the foundation of the first Islamic Astronomical Bureau in Peking (1271) to the fall of the Ming dynasty (1644). In sharp contrast with previous researchers -- generally limited to one language (Chinese) and generally not aware of the intricacies of the history of astronomy -- the author has a particularly good command of highly difficult and specialized domains, practically never mastered by a single person at the same time: the technical history of mathematical astronomy, both Greek, Medieval and Islamic. He also has a direct access to all available original sources, Chinese, Korean, Arabic and Russian, not to mention Japanese modern scholarly studies (Dr. van Dalen has worked in Kyoto jointly with Prof. Yano Michio, the outstanding Japanese contemporary specialist of these questions). The author has thus been able to establish in a convincingly way that the Huihui li (Chinese Muslim Astronomy) and a hitherto unnoticed Arabic zîj now in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), written in Tibet in 1366, by a certain al-Sanjufînî, have a common origin.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEHere, the star table in the Huihui li is studied in depth, from various angles, together with other Islamic Star Tables from China. In particular, the author tackles the complex problem of the errors in the stellar coordinates in the Huihui li and he justifiably remarks that a systematic analysis of the Chinese data along the lines of the work that has already been done on Ptolemy's Catalogue would be promising. He also tries to date the star table in the Huihui li and he studies in depth the question of the edition of the text of the table. Furthermore, he gives a detailed table of longitudes and latitudes of stars with precise identifications (pp. 156-169). Lastly, he provides a very well-informed appendix on Chinese traditional constellations and an excellent bibliography of recent works on the subject.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEBy any standards, the present work is a major and very brilliant contribution to our understanding of the history of Chinese astronomy in its relations with the non-Chinese world during the medieval period.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0963.00039].