Jaghmini


Mahmūd ibn Muḥammad ibn Umar al-Jaghmini or 'al-Chaghmīnī', or al-Jaghmini, was a 13th or 14th-century Arab physician, astronomer and author of the Qanunshah a short epitome of by Avicenna in Persian, and Mulakhkhas, a work on astronomy completed in 808 AH - 1405/6 AD.

Life

Little of him is known beyond what is indicated by his name, that he was a native of Jaghmin, a village in Khwarezm, current day Uzbekistan. Confusion over the date of his death also exists as both 1344 and 1221 have been cited.

Qanunshah

The popularity of the Qanunshah may be indicated by the number of scholarly commentaries it produced. Two were by contemporaries of his, the scientists Ghazī Zade Rūmi and Mīr Seyed Sharīf Gorganī. Several versefied versions were also produced and considerable evidence exists of its use in medical teaching in the eastern provinces of the Islamic world.

Mulakhkhas

The celebrated Ottoman-Turkish historian Haji Khalifa, in his biographic account contained in Sullam al-Wusūl, mentions reading al-Jaghmini's Mulakhkhas, together with another astronomical work, Ashkal al-ta'sis by Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Ashraf al-Samarqandi, with his tutor A'rej Mehmed Efendi, between the years 1643-45 AD. A treatise by Musa ibn Muhammad Qadizade al-Rumi called Sharh al- mulakhas fi al-hay'a (Compendium of the Science of Astronomy, seems to have been a commentary on it.