مجله تاریخ علم
سال سوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 3، تابستان 1384)

Kamāl al-DīnFārsī, the great mathematician and physicist, was living in the period between the Islamic world’s releasing from the cross wars and on the threshold of the Mongolian invasion. Also at the same time, south Europe, in particular Italy was gradually dominating the international trade. These three parameters led to weakness of scientific activities in some parts of Islamic world, and its scientific revival in some other parts. So one of the most important periods of the history of Islamic science was formed; the period which can be called Farsi Century. The scientific environment of Tabriz which was one of the active pivots of science in that period, led Fārsī to study optics and Alhazen’s book entitled al-Manāẓir. This thoroughly scientific study resulted in innovation and improvement in some important optical subjects like rainbow.Investigating the circumstances of the influence of the aforementioned parameters on scientific works in different domains throughout the Islamic world at that period, this article aims to show Farsi’s contribution in progress of physics and mathematics.

Nous nous intéressons dans ce travail principalement à l’introduction d’un traité sur certains médicaments composés, traité parle savant et médecin Muhammad b. Zakariyyā al-Rāzī ou Razès des Latins (ça 865-925). Les médicaments décrits dans cet ouvrage portent le nom de Iyāriĵāt (pl. d’iyāriğ, forme arabe défigurée du Gr. ierà) qui étaient des électuaires composes pour différents usages officinaux. Nous examinons les échanges scientifiques dans un mağlis (ou «réunion, assemblée») en les confrontant avec les informations fournies sur la thérapie médicamente use dans le reste du texte

In his treatise on alchemy, Fārābī tried to explain why alchemy is mixed with mysteries. And then according to Aristotle's logical discourse, he demonstrated alchemy's practical aspect that is the transmutation of a base metal into a noble metal like gold; but his reasoning is purely philosophical, and not empirical. This article contains the Arabic text of the aforementioned treatise and its Persian translation.

Alchemy for Jābir is the universal knowledge; so the main purpose of Jābirian alchemy is to find the way of knowing the universe; and the quest for the real wisdom is the most important dimension of this ambitious purpose.This article aims to present a brief survey ofJābirian alchemical thought through a hermeneutic approach.

There is a spell in Firdaws al-Hikmah, for easing childbirth in overdue pregnancy or difficult labour, which has been published with mistakes.Introducing this book and its author, and pointing to its historical value, this article is to present the correct form of the aforementioned spell, and also discuss briefly the importance of the use of spells, charms, and invocations in curing diseases and relaxing the afflicted and encumbered people, as a stage in development of human sciences.

In our time Zodiacal Light (ZL) is not amongst the most evident of astronomical phenomena, however the results of this paper suggests that this was not so in the world of antiquity. The aim of this paper is to show that there is a direct link between the numbers of bright naked eye comets and the brightening or fading of the ZL. To prove this phenomenon a 500 year time span was studied. The role of ZL in giving rise to the formation of spiritual afterlife beliefs was also studied, eventually showing that a large part of such beliefs may have been closely related to astronomical observations of this type and this has led to devising a number of mechanisms to explain the observed phenomenon, whilst the suggested mechanisms display a uniform correlation in a wide space-time expanse. The most recent find of this study is that the East-West directed Neanderthal burial sites may display the oldest scant observational record of the ZL.The first part of this study deals with the observations of ZL in Iran and Eurasia before the rise of Islam, suggesting ‘hairy style’ designs on the Sialk pottery may depict 1st millennium BC cometary observations. The Treaties on Describing the Mechanism of the Zodiacal Light (Risāla Dar Bayān-i Ṣubḥ-i Kādhib) by Naṣīr al-DīnṬūsī is published here for the first time; photos of the manuscripts included.The second part is devoted to the efforts of Iranian astronomers to understand the nature of ZL from a mathematical and physical point of view.