Al-Sufi was born December 7th, 903 and died May 25th, 986 in Iran. He was known across the west as Azophi, one of the two most outstanding practical astronomers of the middle ages. One night while visiting the court of the Būyid caliph in Isfahan, the caliph asked another gentleman who happened to be well read in astronomy to identify a star that should be on the horizon. This is when Al-Sufi saw that the man was struggling to find the star. Al-Sufi took it upon himself to explain to the caliph and the other astronomer that there was a calculation error in Ptolemy’s Almagest. He told them how the stars had shifted from the positions they had been plotted in by the Alexandrian 800 years prior. So in order to read the stars that night they had to add 12 longitudinal degrees.
Al-Sufi was also the first astronomer to describe the ‘nebulosity’ of the nebula in Andromeda in his book of constellations. He first referred to it as White Bull, but we now know it as the greater magellanic cloud. Al-Sufi’s book “Kitab al-Kawatib al-Thabit al-Musawwar” was referred to as a masterpiece on stellar astronomy. In this book he included descriptions of nebulae, color of stars, and Arabic folk astronomy. He also included updated calculations of Ptolemy’s stellar longitude as well as other expansions of the Almagest. In his book he had every constellation represented twice: the first time was reflecting how the starry forms would look to an observer looking down at a celestial globe; and the second time was reflecting how they appear while gazing up at night sky. Kitab al-Kawatib is considered important even now for the study of proper motions and long period variables. Overall Al-Sufi’s influence in astronomy was substantial, and his contributions to the field influenced others to become more interested in astronomy such as the Buwayh Sultan and Sharaf-al-Dawlah.
Works Cited
Al-Sufi (Azophi), 903-986 C.E. (n.d.). ESO.org. Retrieved September 27, 2024, from https://www.eso.org/gen-fac/pubs/astclim/espas/iran/sufi.html
Fox, B. (2023, September 21). Behold the Nebulous Smear: 'Abd al-Rahmān al-Sūfī's *Illustrated Book of Fixed Stars* (ca. 1430). The Public Domain Review. Retrieved September 27, 2024, from https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/fixed-stars/
Hafez, I. (n.d.). Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi and his book of the fixed stars: a journey of re-discovery. NASA ADS. Retrieved September 27, 2024, from https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010PhDT.......295H/abstract
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