Sahl ibn Bishr al-IsrailiPersian:ابوعثمان سهل بن حبیب بن هانی (c. 786–c. 845), also known asRabban al-TabariPersian:ربان طبری andHaya al-Yahudi ("the Jew"), was aJewish[1][2][3] orSyriac Christian[4][5]astrologer,[6]astronomer andmathematician fromTabaristan. He was the father ofAli ibn Sahl the scientist and physician, who became a convert to Islam.[7]
He served as astrologer to the governor ofKhuristan and then to thevizier ofBaghdad. He wrote books on astronomy, astrology, and arithmetic, all in Arabic.[8]
Sahl is believed to be the first who translated theAlmagest ofPtolemy intoArabic.
Sahl ibn Bishr wrote in the Greek astrological tradition. Sahl's first five books were preserved in the translation of John of Seville (Johannes Hispanus) (c. 1090 – c. 1150). See the English translation by Holden. The sixth book deals with three thematic topics regarding the influences on the world and its inhabitants was translated byHerman of Carinthia. The work contains divinations based on the movements of the planets and comets.
There are some books by Sahl ibn Bishr in Arabic such as:
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, the son of a Syriac Christian scholar living in Persia on the Caspian Sea...
Ibn al-Qiftî (4) renders the titleRabban correctly but with a false explanation, taking it for the Jewish title ofRabbi. So'Alî b. Rabban passed into all historical works, until quite recently, as a Muslim of Jewish origin, although'Alî himself, in the preface to his work, explains this titleRabban as being theSyriac word for "our Master" or "our Teacher". The late ProfessorHorovitz told me and wrote to me several years ago, that this was a Christian title;A. Mingana gave the proof of this in print for the first time in I922.'Alî says in his apologetic tract "The Book of Religion and Empire", which he wrote about 855 A.D., that he himself was a Christian before he was converted to Islam, and that his uncleZakkâr was a prominent Christian scholar.
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