Puig i Tàrrech, Roser

Suhayl International Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilisation

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

Suhayl 10 (2011), pp. 169-189 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Reviews
Paul Kunitzsch and Richard 
Lorch, Theodosius, De habitatio-
nibus. Arabic and Medieval Latin 
Translations. Bayerische Akade-
mie der Wissenschaften. Philoso-
phisch-Historische Klasse. Sitz-
ungsberichte-Jahrgang 2011, 
Heft 1. München 2011 
Theodosius of Bithynia was a Greek 
astronomer and mathematician who 
lived ca. 100 BC. He wrote three 
important works on a primitive form 
of spherical astronomy: Sphaerica, 
De diebus et noctibus, and De 
habitationibus. 
De habitationibus treats, in a 
geometrical way, the variations in 
the visibility of the sky depending 
on latitude. The text is usually 
considered to belong to a collection 
called “little astronomy” by the 
Greeks and “jumlat al-mutawassiÐāt” 
by the Arabs: the “middle books” 
that should be read between Euclid 
and Ptolemy, whose Almagest is 
one of the pieces of the Great 
Collection of astronomy. 
The printed version of the Greek 
text of De habitationibus has been 
available since Fecht’s edition pu-
blished in Berlin in 1927 (Theodosii 
de habitationibus liber, de diebus et 
noctibus libri duo, Abhandlungen 
der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 
zu Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Kl., N.F. 
XIX,4; repr. Nendeln: Kraus, 1970). 
In this 95-page book, with a handy 
format of 14 x 22 cm, Kunitzsch 
and Lorch present a parallel critical 
edition of the Arabic and Medieval 
Latin translations. They also offer a 
non-literal English translation with 
comments at the end of the book. 
The Arabic translation is based 
on three different manuscripts pre-
served in Istanbul (A), and in two 
private libraries in Lahore (N) and 
New York (K) which all have as 
their reference Fecht’s edition men-
tioned above. In A and K the 
translation from Greek to Arabic is 
attributed to QusÐā ibn Lūqā (died 
ca. 300/912-13). This attribution 
does not appear in N where the text 
is described in the colophon as a 
revision of Thābit ibn Qurra al-
©arrānī (died 901). The Arabic edi-
tion preserves only the name QusÐā 
ibn Lūqā. Both names are omitted in 
the appended English translation, as 
they are in the Latin version.  
The Latin text was established 
from two manuscripts: Paris (P) and 
Berlin (B). The translator into Latin 
was Gerard of Cremona (ca. 1114-
170 Reviews 
1187). The variant readings introdu-
ced by Kunitzsch and Lorch were 
decided by reference to the Arabic 
version. They also followed 
Gerard’s lettering of the diagrams. 
Theodosius’ De habitationibus 
consists of 12 propositions, each of 
them structured as follows: state-
ment, diagram, example, mathema-
tical proof, and, although not always, 
the author’s commentary introduced 
by lat. Dico (Ar. fa-aqūlu). The 
content deals in particular with the 
astronomical phenomena observed 
in places of habitation, that is, locis 
in quibus morantur homines or 
masākin, at extreme latitudes. 
The critical edition is masterfully 
executed and the translation, with a 
wealth of footnotes, is excellent, as 
one would expect from these au-
thors. We strongly recommend this 
book to readers. 
Roser Puig 
Paul Kunitzsch and Richard 
Lorch, Theodosius, Sphaerica. 
Arabic and Medieval Latin 
Translations, Boethius, Franz 
Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2010. 
431 pp. 
In the last few years, Paul Kunitzsch 
and Richard Lorch have been 
working on the enormous task of 
publishing critical editions of the 
works of Theodosius in their Arabic 
and Latin translations. In this issue 
of Suhayl, readers will find a paper 
by these two scholars on the De 
diebus et noctibus as well as a 
review of their edition of De 
habitationibus (München, 2011). 
Here I concentrate on the most 
important of these publications, the 
edition of the Sphaerica. 
The volume contains, on facing 
pages, the Arabic text and the Latin 
translation by Gerard of Cremona 
(pp. 11-311), with an introduction 
(pp. 1-10), an edition and translation 
of the notes (marginal, in the text 
and in a half page) by Abý l-©asan 
b. Saþ÷d in a manuscript from a 
private library in Lahore (pp. 313-
315), an edition and translation of a 
series of lemmas (extant in mss. 
Istanbul, Seray, Ahmet III 3464, 
Paris BnF hebr. 1101 and several 
Latin mss., among them Paris BnF 
lat. 9335), related to an inequality 
stated by Theodosius, without proof, 
in proposition 11 of the third book, 
as well as notes added in the Latin 
translation to proposition 11 of the 
second book (pp. 316-327), and a 
careful collection of notes on the 
manuscript tradition of the 
geometrical diagrams (pp. 328-341). 
The volume ends with a 
“Mathematical summary” (pp. 343-
427), which is, in fact, almost an 
English translation of the book in 
which the propositions are 
translated in full and the proofs are 
formulated in modern notation with 
notes that compare the Arabic and 
Latin translations with the Greek 
original. At the end of the volume 
there is a complete bibliography (pp. 
429-431). 
As explained in the introduction, 
Theodosius’ Sphaerica is one of the 
middle books (al-mutawassiÐ×t) that 


Paul Kunitzsch and Richard Lorch, Theodosius, De habitationibus. Arabic and Medieval Latin Translations

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