Ibn al-Shatir's planetary models
Modelos planetarios de Ibn al-Shatir
- Date
- c. 1350 · confidence medium
- Place
- Damascus, Syria
- Credited to
- Ibn al-Shatir (muwaqqit of the Umayyad Mosque)
- People
- 👤 Ibn al-Shatir1304–1375
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
He eliminated Ptolemy's equant and eccentrics using combinations of epicycles and Tusi couples, producing models for the Moon and Mercury mathematically identical to those Copernicus used in 1543.
His system is geocentric. How Copernicus might have come to know these models (Byzantine manuscripts, contacts in Italy) is an open debate (Swerdlow, Saliba, Ragep).
What it led to
- lunar models without Ptolemy's distance distortion
- Copernican astronomy
- the non-Ptolemaic tradition of Maragheh