Ibn al‐Ādamī (flourished in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

, c. 925), was a 10th-century

Islamic astronomer Medieval Islamic astronomy comprises the astronomical developments made in the Islamic world, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age (9th–13th centuries), and mostly written in the Arabic language. These developments mostly took place in th ...

who wrote an influential work of

zij A ' () is an Islamic astronomical book that tabulates parameters used for astronomical calculations of the positions of the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Etymology The name ''zīj'' is derived from the Middle Persian term ' or ' "cord". Th ...

based on Indian sources. The book, now lost, uses the Indian methods found in the '' Sindhind''. The 11th-century historian

Sa'id al-Andalusi Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī (), in full Abū al-Qāsim Ṣāʿid ibn Abū al-Walīd Aḥmad ibn Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāʿid ibn ʿUthmān al-Taghlibi al-Qūrtūbi () (1029July 6, 1070 AD; 4206 Shawwal, 462 AH), was an Arab qadi of ...

informs us that the theory of

trepidation Trepidation (from Lat. ''trepidus'', "trepidatious"), in now-obsolete medieval theories of astronomy, refers to hypothetical oscillation in the precession of the equinoxes. The theory was popular from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The origin o ...

that became known to Europe and was ascribed to

Thabit ibn Qurra Thabit () is an Arabic name Arabic names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from Arabic-speaking and also non-Arab Muslim countries have not had given name, given, middle name, middle, and family names but rather a ...

can be found instead in the Zij of Ibn al-Adami, who himself may have known of this theory from Thabit's grandon,

Ibrahim ibn Sinan Ibrahim ibn Sinan (Arabic: ''Ibrāhīm ibn Sinān ibn Thābit ibn Qurra'', ; born 295296 AH/ in Baghdad, died: 334-335 AH/946 in Baghdad, aged 38) was a mathematician and astronomer who belonged to a family of scholars originally from Harran in n ...

. Ibn al-Adami is also the source for the story of how

Indian astronomy Astronomy has a long history in the Indian subcontinent, stretching from History of India, pre-historic to History of India (1947–present), modern times. Some of the earliest roots of Indian astronomy can be dated to the period of Indus Valle ...

reached the court of Caliph

al-Mansur Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Manṣūr (; ‎; 714 – 6 October 775) usually known simply as by his laqab al-Manṣūr () was the second Abbasid caliph, reigning from 754 to 775 succeeding his brother al-Saffah (). He is known ...

in the early 770s in Baghdad. Presumably, he is the son of Al-Adami.

References

Sources

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10th-century astronomers Astronomers from the Abbasid Caliphate {{Astronomer-stub