ABSTRACT
Introduction The transmission of Greek scientific ideas into Arabic and their eventual transformation, before they were passed on to medieval Europe, is one of the most interesting episodes in the history of science. Recent research in the field of the history of astronomy has begun to uncover the main outline of a long Arabic tradition in which the Greek astronomical texts were criticized, modified, and at times completely revamped. For medieval and Renaissance Europe, this tradition has also begun to be more and more significant on account of the similarities being revealed between it and the achievements of Copernicus.1 For historians of Arabic astronomy the question continues of the genesis and development of this critical tradition. Several schematic hypotheses have been advanced already, all of them implying a certain measure of periodization, through which attempts have been made to explain the true dimensions of the Arabic astronomical tradition, and to organize the texts concerned in some coherent order of development.2 New concepts, mostly coined during the second half of our own century, such as the Maragha School,3 are beginning to gain currency in the literature, and more and more attention is being paid to the detailed works of the astronomers connected to that school — all because of the remarkable parallels between some of the works of the so-called Maragha astronomers and the works of Copernicus some two centuries later.4
