Similarly, a few years later, or even contemporaneously with Khwārizmī, we witness the creation of the discipline of Hay'a, as in 'ilm al-hay'a, which also did not have a Greek parallel. And that too could not have come about, as it did in the work of Qusṭā b. Lūqā (fl. ca. 850), which is still preserved in an Oxford Manuscript,[42] during the first generation of translations. Moreover, it is remarkable to note that Qusṭā himself, like other accomplished translators of his time, was already composing his own new scientific books, like his book of Hay'a just mentioned, while he was still translating older, more common Greek scientific texts. Ḥunain did the same, and so did many others in this period. All that could not have come about at the hands of people who were translating for the first time, and needing to create the new technical terminology for their translations as well as their original compositions. In Qusṭā b. Lūqā's Arabic translation of the Arithmetica of Diophantus there is a clear adoption of the algebraic language that was developed by the Arabic-writing algebraists of Qusṭā's time, as is evident from Qusṭā's reference to the title of Diophantus's work as ṣinā'at al-jabr (Art of Algebra), a term that does not exist in Greek, and as was discussed by Rashed.[43] This kind of liberty with the translation clearly demonstrates the dynamic nature of the translation process of the early ninth century. Classical Greek scientific texts could easily be acclimatized within the current Arabic sciences of the time, thus transforming the translation process into a simultaneous creative process as well.
Furthermore, the remarkable advances that were made by Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib (fl. ca. 850) in the field of trigonometry and mathematical projection go far beyond what was known from the Indian and the Greek sources, and they could not have been accomplished by someone who was only a beneficiary of an early stage of translation. Ḥabash devised new ways of projecting planespheric astrolabes that preserved such fundamental features as directions to a specific point on the globe (in this case Mecca) and the distances to that point.[44] Such projections were not known from any earlier civilization, and their existence must give rise to questions regarding the possibility of the production of such results by people who would have been still struggling with the creation of new technical terms if they were contemporaries with the early generation of translators.
This generation of early mathematicians and astronomers must have also developed the Indian numeral system to such an extent that by the next century we note the first appearance of decimal fractions together with the decimal point in a manuscript completed in Damascus in 952 by Uqlīdisī.[45]
In sum, such results as the new algebra and trigonometry, the new hay'a as well as the new methods of projection and the introduction of the Indian numerals and the development of decimal fractions, could not have all been produced at the same time with no previous works in those domains or in domains directly related to them. As a result, if the classical narrative insists on the beginning of the translation movement with the coming of the Abbāsid Empire, and for reasons that were only motivated by the desire of the Abbāsid caliphs, these questions will have to be answered before such claims can be accepted.[46]
In the field of scientific instrumentation, like the production of new types of mathematical projections that were created by Ḥabash as was already stated, those instruments could not have been created ex nihilo, as the classical narrative would want us to accept. In the case of Ḥabash's astrolabe, the new projections seemed to be related to the new Islamic requirements of facing Mecca while praying five times a day and performing a pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime. Yet such developments still required a remarkable sophistication in the application of geometric and trigonometric methods. Under normal circumstances, all these features would not usually come at once, but would rather progress slowly over time.
Similarly, the scientists of the same generation of Ḥajjāj, Khwārizmī, and Ḥabash and their colleagues seem to have also taken it upon themselves to double-check the observational results that were reported in the Greek and Indian sources from which they were trying to get their own inspiration. And there too, we find remarkable results already achieved in this very early period that indicate a much longer acquaintance with those fields. The observation that determined that the inclination of the ecliptic was not 23;51,20° (as was reported in Ptolemy's Almagest[47]) or 24°[48](as was reported in the Indian sources), but that it was about 23;30° (as was determined during the first half of the ninth century[49]). That could not have come about as a result of the efforts of inexperienced astronomers who were conducting those observations for the first time. Such precision could only be achieved by mature astronomers who knew exactly what they were doing. That their value for the inclination is still in circulation today is a testament to the ingenuity of those ninth-century observers.
In the same vein, the determination of the new value for the precession parameter as 1°/66 years[50] or for the value of the solar equation, or the motion of the solar apogee — supposed to be fixed by Ptolemy — also could not have come about at the hands of inexperienced astronomers who were trying their hands on the discipline for the first time just as the major texts of that discipline were being translated. All these results must presuppose a longer acquaintance with such methods of observations, such new notions of precision, and such reflection on the function of instruments in determining new parameters. In sum, they must presuppose a much longer period of instruction and acquaintance with such concepts before the efforts would begin to yield such fruits.
Add to that the critique of the Greek observational as well as theoretical approaches to astronomy that were leveled by Muḥammad b. Mūsā b. Shākir[51] and his brothers Aḥmad and Ḥasan. Muḥammad, the first of the three brothers, would critique Ptolemy for his incoherent description of the physical operations among the celestial spheres, and would deem such motions physically impossible. And the three brothers together, or someone in their circle, would critique the method by which Ptolemy determined the position of the solar apogee.[52] These are not efforts that could happen all at once without previous experience with observational techniques, acquaintance with instruments, critical judgment of the sources of error, a developed concept of precision, and a well-thought-out connection between the observations and the theoretical results that were being achieved. People who were still struggling to translate texts for the first time could not normally achieve such maturity.
43
Roshdi Rashed,
44
For this specific projection of Ḥabash, see E. S. Kennedy, P. Kunitzsch, and R. P. Lorch,
46
To his credit a similar position is held by Roshdi Rashed in his "Problems of the Transmission", where he speaks of a translation period preceding Abbāsid times, but characterized as "individual initiatives", and goes on to claim that the translation movement had to wait for the second period of "incomparable importance... [when] translation has become a part of a much wider activity that may be designated by the evocative title "the institutionalization of science", p. 200. Unfortunately though, Rashed explains the translation movement of the early Abbāsids as dependent on the desires of the caliphs and the abundant existence of scientists without explaining how such desires and scientists came about. A. I. Sabra also proposes a similar explanation in his thought-provoking article "The Appropriation", where to his credit too, Sabra speaks in this article of a process of "appropriation" rather than "contact" or encounter of "pockets" and one can read him to say that Islamic civilization sought the ancient classical Greek texts and did not satisfy itself with what was available in Byzantium at the time.
48
See
49
See Kennedy,
50
For the values of 1/66 years or 1/70 years, see Kennedy,
51
For the theoretical critique of Muḥammad, see G. Saliba, "Early Arabic Critique of Ptolemaic Cosmology: A Ninth-Century Text on the Motion of the Celestial Spheres",