ABSTRACT
Nothing is known about the earliest known Maghribi zij, Ibn Abi 1-Rijal al-Qayrawam’s Hall al-caqd wa-bayan al-rasd (beginning of the eleventh century), which seems to have been lost. Two centuries later, Abu l-‘Abbas ibn Ishaq al-Tamimi al-Tunisi left an unfinished set of tables which survive in a unique manuscript of Hyderabad, discovered in 1978 by D. A. King. The predominant influence in Ibn Ishaq’s zij was that of the Andalusian school represented by Ibn al-Zarqalluh, Ibn al-Kammad and Ibn al-Haim. This influence continued during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries through several “editions” of the zij of Ibn Ishaq such as the one prepared by the anonymous compiler of the aforementioned collection extant in the Hyderabad manuscript, the Minhaj of Ibn al-Banna’ of Marrakesh, and the two zijes composed by the Tunisian-Andalusian astronomer Muhammad ibn al-Raqqam.
