Ābu Ḥanīfah Āḥmad ibn Dawūd Dīnawarī (815–896
CE, Arabic: أبو حنيفة الدينوري) was
an Islamic Golden Age polymath, astronomer, agriculturist, botanist,
metallurgist, geographer, mathematician, and historian.
His ancestry came from the region of Dinawar, in
Kermanshah in modern-day western Iran. He was instructed in the two main
traditions of the Abbasid-era grammarians of al-Baṣrah and of al-Kūfah. His
principal teachers were Ibn al-Sikkīt and his own father. He studied grammar,
philology, geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy and was known to be a reliable
traditionist. His most renowned contribution is Book of Plants, for which he is
considered the founder of Arabic botany. Dinawari was said to have been of
Persian origin. Although he was also said to have been Kurdish, or Arab of
Persian ancestry. He may have studied astronomy in Isfahan.
Mathematics and
natural sciences
1. Kitâb al-kusuf ("Book of Solar Eclipses")
2. Kitāb an-nabāt yufadiluh al-‘ulamā' fī ta’līfih (كتاب النبات يفضله العلماء في تأليفه), ‘Plants, valued by scholars
for its composition'
3. Kitāb Al-Anwā (كتاب الانواء) 'Tempest' (weather)
4. Kitāb Al-qiblah wa'z-zawāl (كتاب القبلة والزوال) "Book of Astral
Orientations"
5. Kitāb ḥisāb ad-dūr (كتاب
حساب الدور), "Arithmetic/Calculation of Cycles"
6. Kitāb ar-rud ‘alā raṣd al-Iṣbhānī (كتاب الردّ على رصدٌ الاصفهانى) Refutation of Lughdah
al-Iṣbhānī
7. Kitāb al-baḥth fī ḥusā al-Hind (كتاب البحث في حسا الهند), "Analysis of Indian
Arithmetic"
8. Kitāb al-jam’ wa'l-tafrīq (كتاب الجمع والتفريق); "Book of
Arithmetic/Summation and Differentiation"
9. Kitāb al-jabr wa-l-muqabila (كتاب الجبر والمقابلة), "Algebra and Equation"
10. Kitāb nuwādr al-jabr (كتاب
نوادرالجبر), "Rare Forms of Algebra"
Social sciences and
humanities
1. Kitāb al-akhbār al-ṭiwāl (كتاب الاخبار الطوال), "General
History"
2. Kitāb Kabīr (كتاب كبير) "Great Book" [in
history of sciences]
3. Kitāb al-faṣāha (كتاب الفصاحة), "Book of Rhetoric"
4. Kitāb al-buldān (كتاب البلدان), "Book of Cities (Regions)
(Geography)"
5. Kitāb ash-sh’ir wa-shu’arā’ (كتاب الشعر والشعراء), "Poetry and the
Poets"
6. Kitāb al-Waṣāyā (كتاب الوصايا), Commandments (wills);
7. Kitāb ma yulahan fīh al’āmma (كتاب ما يلحن فيه العامّة), How the Populace Errs in
Speaking;
8. Islâh al-mantiq ("Improvement of Speech")
9. Ansâb al-Akrâd ("Ancestry of the Kurds").
Translations
His General
History (al-Akhbar al-Tiwal) has been edited and published numerous
times (Vladimir Guirgass, 1888; Muhammad Sa'id Rafi'i, 1911; 'Abd al-Munim
'Amir & Jamal al-din Shayyal, 1960; Isam Muhammad al-Hajj 'Ali, 2001), but
has not been translated in its entirety into a European language. Jackson
Bonner has recently prepared an English translation of the pre-Islamic passages
of al-Akhbar al-Tiwal.
Botany
Al-Dinawari is
considered the founder of Arabic botany for his Kitab al-Nabat (Book of
Plants), which consisted of six volumes. Only the third and fifth volumes have
survived, though the sixth volume has partly been reconstructed based on
citations from later works. In the surviving portions of his works, 637 plants
are described from the letters sin to ya. He describes the phases of plant
growth and the production of flowers and fruit.
Many of the Muslim
early botanical works are lost, such as that of al-Shaybani (d.820), Ibn
al-Arabi (d.844), Al-Bahili (d.845) and Ibn as-Sikkit (d.857), however, their
works, are extensively quoted in later books by Abu Hanifa Al-Dinawari.
Astronomy and
meteorology
Parts of al-Dinawari's
Book of Plants deals with the applications of Islamic astronomy and meteorology
to agriculture. It describes the astronomical and meteorological character of
the sky, the planets and constellations, the sun and moon, the lunar phases
indicating seasons and rain, the anwa (heavenly bodies of rain), and
atmospheric phenomena such as winds, thunder, lightning, snow, floods, valleys,
rivers, lakes, wells and other sources of water.
Earth sciences
Parts of al-Dinawari's
Book of Plants deals with the Earth sciences in the context of agriculture. He
considers the Earth, stone and sands, and describes different types of ground,
indicating which types are more convenient for plants and the qualities and
properties of good ground.
Sumber
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Mathematician
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