Al-Isfizari

Abū Ḥātim al-Muẓaffar al-Isfazārī
المظفر الاسفزاري
Manuscript of Irshād dhawī al-cirfān ilā ṣinācat al-qaffān
Academic work
Era	Islamic Golden Age
Main interests	Mathematics, astronomy
Notable works	Irshād dhawī al-cirfān ilā ṣinācat al-qaffān

Abū Ḥātim al-Muẓaffar al-Isfazārī (Persian: ابوحاتم مظفر اسفزاری; fl. late 11th or early 12th century) was an Islamic mathematician, astronomer and engineer from Khurasan. According to the historian and geographer Ibn al-Athir and the polymath Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, he worked in the Seljuq observatory of Isfahan. The Persian writer Nezami Aruzi met him in Balkh in (in present-day Afghanistan) in 1112 or 1113.^[1]

Al-Isfazārī was a contemporary of the Persian polymath Umar al-Khayyam and the Persian astronomer Al-Khazini. Al-Isfazārī's main surviving work, Irshād dhawī al-cirfān ilā ṣinācat al-qaffān (Guiding the Possessors of Learning in the Art of the Steelyard), sets out the theory of the steelyard balance with unequal arms. His other surviving works include a summary of Euclid's Elements, a text on geometrical measurements, and a treatise in Persian on meteorology.^[1]

Al-Isfazārī's corpus of mechanics is composed of two sets of texts, which have been published as Matn al-Muẓaffar al-Isfazārī fī cilmay al-aṯqāl wa’l-ḥiyal(Text of Al-Muzaffar Al-Isfazar in the words Al-Taql and Al-Hail) by the Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation.^[2]

References

1. Abattouy, Mohammed (2007). "Isfizārī: Abū Ḥātim al-Muẓaffar ibn Ismāҁīl al-Isfizārī". In Hockey, Thomas; et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer. pp. 577–578. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_703. ISBN 978-1-4419-9918-4.
2. Abattouy, Mohammed; Al-Hassani, Salim (17 November 2015). "The Mechanical Corpus of Al-Isfizārī in the Sciences of Weights and Ingenious Devices: New Arabic Texts in Theoretical and Practical Mechanics". Muslim Heritage. FSTC Ltd. Archived from the original on 1 February 2023. Retrieved 1 February 2023.