{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Knowledge Transmission",
  "department_id": "TRANSMISSION",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "2nd century CE \u2013 1381 CE",
  "place": "Alexandria, Baghdad, Toledo, Saragossa",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "Cambridge University Press",
      "title": "Claudii Ptolemaei Opera quae exstant omnia \u2014 Almagest Books 1\u20136",
      "type": "Critical text",
      "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/claudii-ptolemaei-opera-quae-exstant-omnia/1130A07AFA3413143D3D353D3A1F6362"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus / Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities",
      "title": "Ptolemy, al-Majis\u1e6d\u012b (tr. al-\u1e24ajj\u0101j)",
      "type": "Manuscript database record",
      "url": "https://ptolemaeus.badw.de/work/200"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus / Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities",
      "title": "Ptolemy, Almagesti (tr. Gerard of Cremona)",
      "type": "Manuscript database record",
      "url": "https://ptolemaeus.badw.de/work/3"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "University of Pennsylvania Kislak Center",
      "title": "Kit\u0101b al-Mijis\u1e6d\u012b li-Ba\u1e6dlaym\u016bs, LJS 268",
      "type": "Manuscript catalogue record",
      "url": "https://makingrenmanuscripts.exhibits.library.upenn.edu/items/show/60"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Qatar Digital Library / British Library",
      "title": "Kit\u0101b al-Majis\u1e6d\u012b, British Library Add MS 7474",
      "type": "Digitized manuscript",
      "url": "https://qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100023514340.0x00007a"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "4 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "Ptolemy composed the Mathematical Syntaxis, known as the Almagest, in second-century Alexandria. The Heiberg critical text reprinted by Cambridge presents its observational and mathematical foundations and its computational tables.",
      "heading": "Start with the work",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus documents a direct Greek-to-Arabic translation by al-Hajjaj in 827 to 828 CE under Abbasid patronage, and lists the surviving witnesses, including Leiden Or. 680 and British Library Add MS 7474.",
      "heading": "Into Arabic",
      "source": 1
    },
    {
      "body": "The same database records Gerard of Cremona's Arabic-to-Latin translation at Toledo between about 1140 and 1175, using the two main Arabic versions available to him. A 1175 colophon proves the translation existed by that year, which is not the same as saying it was completed then.",
      "heading": "Into Latin",
      "source": 2
    },
    {
      "body": "The University of Pennsylvania's LJS 268 is an Arabic Almagest in the Ishaq ibn Hunayn translation revised by Thabit ibn Qurra, copied in Saragossa in 1381 with a named scribe and patron. It is a reception witness centuries after the ninth-century translation.",
      "heading": "A dated copy",
      "source": 3
    },
    {
      "body": "The digitized British Library codex preserves Books I to VI of al-Hajjaj's version. Translation event, manuscript copy, and original composition are three dates on this journey. Which one does a photograph of a page show you?",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward",
      "source": 4
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "How does a book travel across languages?",
  "slug": "the-almagest-one-book-four-cities-a-thousand-years",
  "summary": "Follow Ptolemy's astronomical treatise from second-century Alexandria through Arabic translation in Baghdad and Latin translation in Toledo to a dated copy made in Saragossa in 1381.",
  "tags": [
    "Almagest",
    "Ptolemy",
    "Translation",
    "Manuscripts",
    "Transmission"
  ],
  "title": "The Almagest: one book, four cities, a thousand years."
}