Eastern and Western Instruments in Osman Efendi’s Hadiyyat al-Muhtadī (The Gift of the Convert), 1779

Abstract

International audienceThe aim of the present paper is to discuss the origin of the instruments described in Hadiyyat al-Muhtadī (The Gift of the Convert), an Arabic-language mathematical treatise completed in Belgrade on 28 January 1779. This treatise was never printed, but the eleven extant manuscript copies we could locate, very similar in appearance to traditional Arabic manuscripts, suggest a widespread circulation throughout the former Ottoman Empire. [...] we list all of these instruments, translate Osman’s descriptions of the lesser known ones, and discuss their origin: East or West