{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Knowledge Transmission",
  "department_id": "TRANSMISSION",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "14th\u201316th centuries CE",
  "place": "Damascus, the Veneto, Cracow, Uppsala",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "Uppsala University Library / Alvin",
      "title": "Copernicana 4",
      "type": "Library catalogue record",
      "url": "https://www.alvin-portal.org/alvin/view.jsf?pid=alvin-record:112344"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Journal for the History of Astronomy",
      "title": "Ibn al-Shatir and Copernicus: The Uppsala Notes Revisited",
      "type": "Peer-reviewed article",
      "url": "https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021828616678508"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Arabic Sciences and Philosophy",
      "title": "The Mercury Models of Ibn al-Shatir and Copernicus",
      "type": "Peer-reviewed article",
      "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/arabic-sciences-and-philosophy/article/abs/mercury-models-of-ibn-alsatir-and-copernicus/4795AA8292986D0EA0139DB326A43879"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Isis",
      "title": "A Scholarly Intermediary between the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe",
      "type": "Peer-reviewed article",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1086/675550"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Journal for the History of Astronomy",
      "title": "A Critique of the Arguments for Maragha Influence on Copernicus",
      "type": "Peer-reviewed critique",
      "url": "https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002182861404500203"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "5 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "Uppsala University Library's catalogue records Copernicana 4, a composite working bundle that contains printed Alfonsine Tables and Regiomontanus tables owned and annotated by Copernicus, together with his handwritten notes. The research case rates the bundle's identity and Copernicus's annotations as verified facts.",
      "heading": "Start with the verified bundle",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "Ragep's 2016 study revisits the Uppsala notes in relation to Ibn al-Shatir. It is the kind of close technical comparison that a transmission claim has to rest on: not a general resemblance, but specific parameters and constructions.",
      "heading": "The notes revisited",
      "source": 1
    },
    {
      "body": "A 2019 study by Nikfahm-Khubravan and Ragep compares the Mercury models of Ibn al-Shatir and Copernicus in detail. The research case rates the broad claims highly: Islamicate astronomical material reaching Renaissance Italy before and during Copernicus's formative years is treated as verified, and Copernicus working with European material carrying that ancestry as strong evidence.",
      "heading": "The Mercury models",
      "source": 2
    },
    {
      "body": "Morrison's 2014 article in Isis presents Moses Galeano, a scholar who travelled to the Veneto around 1500, knew theories pioneered by Ibn al-Shatir, and moved in Jewish scholarly networks with Christian European contacts. The study is explicit that direct contact with Copernicus is not proven; the research case rates a personal handover as unsupported.",
      "heading": "A possible intermediary",
      "source": 3
    },
    {
      "body": "Blasjo's 2014 critique of the arguments for Maragha influence on Copernicus is part of the record too. With it in view, the specific claim that Ibn al-Shatir's non-Ptolemaic mathematics reached Copernicus through Italian networks is graded a plausible hypothesis, not a fact.",
      "heading": "The counter-argument",
      "source": 4
    },
    {
      "body": "A resemblance, a route, and a handover are three different claims. Which of them does a matching diagram in two manuscripts actually establish?",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "How far can a resemblance be traced?",
  "slug": "from-maragha-to-copernicus-tracing-a-transmission-claim",
  "summary": "Copernicus's planetary models resemble those of Ibn al-Shatir of Damascus. Follow a research case that grades each link in the chain, from verified fact to unsupported story.",
  "tags": [
    "Copernicus",
    "Ibn al-Shatir",
    "Maragha",
    "Transmission",
    "Uppsala"
  ],
  "title": "From Maragha to Copernicus: tracing a transmission claim."
}