Sonja Brentjes

Euclid's Elements, Courtly Patronage and Princely Education

The Persian tradition of Euclids Elements is closely connected with the Arabic transmission of the work in Iran, Central Asia and India. This tradition has multiple starting points. Na īr al-Dīn ūsīs Arabic edition had a profound impact, but it was one of several Arabic versions that served as the basis for Persian translations. At the institutional level both the Arabic and the Persian traditions flourished in different spaces—at the courts, in the madrasa, and in the sphere of collectors. Emphasizing the continued importance of court patronage, this paper explores the specifics of spatial and temporal coordinates in the transmission and transformation of Euclids Elements in Islamic Iran.

Teaching the Mathematical Sciences in Islamic Societies Eighth–Seventeenth Centuries

This chapter surveys important aspects of teaching the mathematical sciences in different Islamic societies between the eighth and seventeenth centuries. It explains the historical concept and classification of the mathematical sciences that were valid in the previous epochs but are yet different from current understanding. Following the historical sequence of institutions, this chapter at first focuses on teaching activities at courts and later on madrasas and similar institutions, using the lens of biographical dictionaries, teacher registers, and educational literature. A third focus of this chapter is how scholars in different periods represented their mathematics education in autobiographies. Further themes outlined are ideas about how one could become a productive mathematician, which mathematical discipline was considered legitimate for earning a living, and which textbooks became bestsellers of mathematics education. The conclusions raise historiographical questions about the possibility or impossibility of constructing one single history of mathematics education for all Islamic societies and the adequate evaluation of an increasing number of elementary mathematical texts in postclassical Islamic societies; this suggests that the so-far dominant macro-historical and long-term approach to the history of mathematical societies should be replaced by medio- and microscale studies.

Towards A New Approach To Medieval Cross- Cultural Exchanges

Abstract This paper discusses the interpretive approach to cross-cultural transfer of knowledge as proposed by early twentieth-century scholars, in particular Charles Homer Haskins, and their successors after the Second World War. It describes this approach as teleological, linear, mono-cultural and static. It traces the changes that several historians of mathematics, science and medicine proposed to this type of observer narrative and shows that in the 1990s the validity of several basic claims of Haskins’ approach was questioned. New claims were formulated, new domains included in the debate and greater attention was paid to the analysis of participant narratives. After analyzing these new trends, the paper outlines directions and views which future research needs to explore for creating a dynamic, open and non-linear model that allows for the participation of many different cultures in the production and transfer of knowledge.

Narratives of knowledge in Islamic societies : what do they tell us about scholars and their contexts?

Current history of science, including cartography and geography, in Islamic societies has lost its mainstream status that it occupied some decades ago. The major reason for this unfortunate development is the change of what constitutes mainstream today in comparison to the past. Mainstream history of science in other than Islamic societies is much more focused on the study of the sciences in culture than on the study of the content of scientific texts or instruments alone. Moreover, numerous of its representatives apply various theory-based approaches and methods taken from other humanities and other fields of the historical sciences. Historians of science in Islamic societies have refused to engage in a productive manner with these newer developments and hence have found themselves marginalized with high costs for subsequent generations in the field. Some newer developments in the US indicate that younger scholars have taken up the challenge. It is, however, too early to judge whether this will lead to a...

Teaching and learning the sciences in Islamicate societies (800-1700)

Sonja Brentjes, 1970’lerde başladığı bilim tarihi çalışmalarını miladi 8001700 tarihleri arasındaki İslâm toplumlarında matematik, haritacılık ve eğitim kurumları alanları odağında sürdürür. Bunun bir uzantısı olarak bilimsel bilginin kültürler arası etkileşimdeki konumu meselesini de özellikle son yirmi yılda yaptığı çalışmalarda ele almaktadır. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri, Almanya, İspanya ve İngiltere’de profesör düzeyinde çeşitli akademik tecrübelerden sonra 2012’den itibaren Berlin’deki Max Planck Enstitüsü (MPIWG) bünyesinde serbest araştırmacı olarak araştırmalarına devam etmektedir. Brentjes’in özellikle kurumlarda ve sosyal yapı içerisinde bilim eğitiminin yerini esas alan birçok yayını vardır.

Teaching the Sciences in Ninth-Century Baghdad as a Question in the History of the Book: The Case of Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. after 256/870)

This paper raises the question as to what role teaching (teachers, teaching material, orality, students) played in intellectual activities and the codification of those activities into texts and manuscripts with respect to the mathematical sciences and natural philosophy in third/ninth-century Baghdad. This issue is approached via the question of how extant works of that period, which are predominantly seen by modern historians of science either as translations or as newly composed research works, can be identified as having had a teaching function. The question of relevance, organization, and content of teaching in the highly innovative context of the mathematical sciences and natural philosophy of the third/ninth century is historiographically significant beyond the recovery of historical details about texts and their character.

Practicing History of Mathematics in Islamicate Societies in 19th-Century Germany and France

This paper discusses methodological and interpretive aspects of practices in the history of the mathematical sciences in Islamicate societies as they emerged in Germany and France during the nineteenth century. It argues that in the nineteenth century, those who practiced history of mathematics in Islamicate societies had a strong methodological commitment. They formulated three main research lines with clear methodological claims. Two of these approaches (a scientific history of mathematics and a serious investigation of primary sources) found general approval in history of mathematics at large. Thus, they continued to be followed in the historiographical and methodical practices during the twentieth century. The third (the integration of progress and source studies into a cultural and biographical narrative) was discarded as a methodological principle. Only under the impact of discussions in history of science and the humanities since the 1980/90s did approaches similar to, and at the same time more sophisticated than, this forgotten third way practiced in the late nineteenth century find new practitioners with a new methodological consciousness.

Fourteenth-century Portolan charts : challenges to our understanding of cross-cultural relationships in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions and of (knowledge?) practices of chart-makers

Abstract This article studies five well-known portolan charts of the fourteenth century, produced at Genoa, Ciutat de Majorca and Venice, with regard to the knowledge their makers used for visualizing physical and human geography in Eastern Europe, Northern Africa and Iraq. It studies four so-called compound images to understand the cultural background of the chosen pictorial and verbal representation instead of analyzing single geographical objects. The results of the analysis strongly suggest that the portolan chart-makers had access to visual material from several cultures around the Mediterranean and Western Asia and that they cooperated creatively with (unknown) members of larger social, economic and cultural networks.

Participant and observer narratives about medieval cross-cultural knowledge transfer : missing, single or multiple translations

A conference on issues of cross-cultural transfer via translation with particular emphasis on historical as well as modern narratives on such events was the main activity in the second year of the International research project “Relatos de intercambio intercultural de conocimiento en la Edad Media y temprana Edad Moderna. Narradores e interlocutores, objetos y prácticas, valores y creencias” (FFI2012-38606). It took place on November 21 and 22, 2014 at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, of which the director Jürgen Renn and Sonja Brentjes are partners and participants in this project. The PI of the project is José Luis Mancha, Department for Philosophy, Logic and History of Science at the University of Seville. Further members are Jésus Garay and José Ferreíros of the same Department, Maribel Fierro, CSIC, Madrid, Rafael Ruiz Azuar, Archaeological Museum, Alicante, Víctor Pallejà de Bustinza, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Jens Høyrup, Roskilde University, Anne Tihon, Catholic University Louvain, Menso Folkerts, Bavarian Academy of Science, Munich, and Tony Levy, CNRS, Paris. Partners of this project are Efthymios Nicolaidis, National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Neohellenic Research, Athens, Alexander Fidora and Matthias M. Tischler, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, and Antoni Malet, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. The project questions the main observer narratives about medieval and early modern cross-cultural exchange of knowledge via translating as created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by comparing them with narratives of participants in such acts, questioning the representation of those participants in historical as well as modern sources and by asking in which manner the standard perspectives on those activities need to be recentred and rephrased. The conference of November 2014 served to discuss recent research on such

Safavid art, science, and courtly education in the seventeenth century

My paper studies several manuscripts of‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ṣūfū’s Kitāb al-kawākib al-thābita, which were produced at the Safavid court, a provincial court at Mashhad or by artists related to either of them. The purpose is to contribute in a small manner to a cultural history of science in a specific context of one of the major post-classical societies. Its main claim is that the Safavid elite paid considerable attention to, and invested substantial resources in, reproducing famous illustrated scientific manuscripts. Content and aesthetic point to Timurid inspirations. In a limited sense, one could speak of a Safavid engagement with translating scientific, medical and geographical texts from Arabic into Persian. The integration of art, science and translation could be described as a specific feature of courtly interest in scholarly knowledge under the Safavids.