The Book of Fixed Stars is an astronomical text written by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi around 964. The book was written in Arabic, although the author himself was Persian. It was an attempt to create a synthesis of the comprehensive star catalogue in Ptolemy’s Almagest with the indigenous Arabic astronomical traditions on the constellations. The book was thoroughly illustrated along with observations and descriptions of the stars, their positions, their magnitudes and their color. His results, as in Ptolemy's Almagest, were set out constellation by constellation. For each constellation, he provided two drawings, one from the outside of a celestial globe, and the other from the inside. The work was highly influential and survives in numerous manuscripts and translations. The oldest manuscript, kept in the Bodleian Library, dates to 1009 and is the work of the author's son. There is a thirteenth-century copy in the British Library. He has the earliest known descriptions and illustrations of what he called "a little cloud", which is actually the Andromeda Galaxy. He mentions it as lying before the mouth of a Big Fish, an Arabic constellation. This "cloud" was apparently commonly known to the Isfahan astronomers, very probably before 905. The first recorded mention of the Large Magellanic Cloud was also given in the Book of Fixed Stars. These were the first galaxies other than the Milky Way to be observed from Earth. The Great Andromeda Nebula he observed was also the first true nebula to be observed, as distinct from a star cluster. He probably also cataloged the Omicron Velorumstar cluster as a "nebulous star", and an additional "nebulous object" in Vulpecula, a cluster now variously known as Al-Sufi's Cluster, the "Coathanger asterism", Brocchi's Cluster or Collinder 399. Moreover, he mentions the two Magellanic Clouds, and that they are not visible from Iraq nor Najd, but visible from Tihama, and that they are called al-Baqar. There has not been a published English translation of the book, though it was translated into French by Hans Schjellerup in 1874. As of March 2012, one is in preparation by Ihsan Hafez of James Cook University, Townsville.
Editions
Text and French translation of Ṣūfī's introduction by J. J. A. Caussin de Perceval in Notices et extraits des manuscrits XII, Paris, 1831, pp. 236f.
H.C.F.C. Schjellerup, , St. Petersburg, 1874. Complete French translation from two late mss., with selected portions in Arabic.
Ketāb ṣowar al-kawākeb al-ṯābeta, edited from five mss., and accompanied by the Orǰūza of Ebn al-Ṣūfī, Hyderabad, India, 1954.
Facsimile edition of the Persian translation by Naṣīr-al-dīn Ṭūsī, Tehran, 1348 Š./1969.
Critical edition of Ṭūsī's translation by Sayyed Moʿezz-al-dīn Mahdavī, Tehran, 1351 Š./1972.
The star nomenclature of the Castilian version, and of an Italian translation made from Castilian, was critically edited by O. J. Tallgren, "Los nombres árabes de las estrelas y la transcripción alfonsina", in Homenaje a R. Menéndez Pidal II, Madrid, 1925, with 'Correcciones y adiciones' in Revista de filología española 12, 1925, pp. 52f.
The Italian translation was edited by P. Knecht, I libri astronomici di Alfonso X in una versione fiorentina del trecento, Saragossa, 1965.
