Jaghmini

A manuscript of al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa, written in Arabic by al-Jaghmīnī (from a private collection).

Sharaf al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Jaghmīnī al-Khwārizmī , commonly known as al-Jaghmīnī or al-Chaghmīnī, was a Persianate Khwārazmian physician, astronomer, mathematician and author who flourished in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. He is best known for the astronomical textbook al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa and the medical compendium Qānūnča fī al-ṭibb, an abridgement of Avicenna's al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb.

Jaghmīnī's ethnic background is not securely known. His nisba al-Khwārizmī associates him with Khwarazm in Central Asia. The 15th-century astronomer Qāḍī Zāda al-Rūmī stated that Jaghmīn was a village of Khwārazm, although modern geographical sources have not securely identified such a settlement. Sally P. Ragep has therefore raised the possibilities that Jaghmīnī may instead have designated a family or, more speculatively, a Turkic tribal affiliation. His surviving scientific works were written in Arabic. The Persian diminutive suffix -ča in the title of his medical Qānūnča, as well as references to Nowruz and Mehregan in the Mulakhkhaṣ, may reflect the Persianate cultural environment in which he worked, but do not establish a specific ethnicity.

Manuscript and internal textual evidence instead places Jaghmīnī securely in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. A manuscript of the Qānūnča was copied at Konya on 12 Ramaḍān 601 AH (3 May 1205), showing that the work was already in circulation by that date. Ragep argues that this effectively eliminates both a 14th-century composition date for the Qānūnča and the need to posit two different Jaghmīnīs.

The Mulakhkhaṣ can itself be dated to 602–603 AH (1205–1206) from astronomical parameters given by Jaghmīnī. In discussing planetary apogees he specifies their positions for the year 1517 of the Alexandrian era, corresponding to 1205–1206 CE, apparently his own current epoch.

Another work, al-Kitāb fī quwā al-kawākib wa-ḍaʿfihā, uses planetary parameters for the preceding year and was therefore probably composed in 1204–1205. It was dedicated to a Shihāb al-Dīn, identified by Ragep as Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Saʿd ibn ʿImrān al-Khwārizmī al-Khīwaqī. Jaghmīnī later dedicated his mathematical Talkhīṣ kitāb Ūqlīdis to the same scholar; its colophon records its completion on 22 Ṣafar 615 AH (19–20 May 1218). Jaghmīnī was therefore certainly alive in 1218.

His fate after 1218 is unknown. Ragep suggests that he may have died during the Mongol conquest of the Khwarazmian Empire, when major centres of learning such as Merv and Gurganj were devastated in 1220–1221. This could explain the traditional date 618 AH (1221–22) sometimes associated with his death, although no contemporary evidence establishes the date conclusively.

His other patron, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khīwaqī, was a prominent Shāfiʿī scholar and an adviser to Khwārazm Shāh ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad. Contemporary sources describe Shihāb al-Dīn as involved in madrasas and libraries in Khwārazm, providing a possible institutional setting for the production and teaching of Jaghmīnī's introductory scientific works.

Astronomy

al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa

The al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa ("Compendium on simple theoretical astronomy") was composed around 1205–1206 and became one of the most successful introductory astronomical textbooks in the Islamic world. It provided a concise account of Ptolemaic astronomy, including the celestial orbs and their motions, astronomical circles and arcs, planetary motions, and the Earth and its inhabited regions.

The text had an exceptionally long teaching history. Ragep identified 57 separate treatises written to elucidate it and at least 61 commentaries, supercommentaries, glosses and translations associated with the work. Thousands of manuscript copies of the original and its derivatives survive. It was translated into Persian, Turkish and Hebrew, and continued to be studied into the 19th century and, in some regions, even later.