ब्राह्मस्फुटसिद्धान्त (ब्रह्मगुप्त - शून्य, कुट्टक, बीजगणित एवं सम्पूर्ण २१ अध्याय सान्वय सटीक)

30 ASTRONCMY IN ANCIENT NATIONS
Ibn Tofeil
Ibn Tofeil, the second of the three Moslem philosophers of
Spain, vizier and physician at the court of Jusuf ben Abd el
Mumin of Morocco, seems to have walked in the footsteps of his
master ; but the only extant work of his, a kind of religious
mystic romance about the emancipation of a soul from the
trammels of this material world, does not give any clue to his
ideas as to the planetary system. But Averroes, who also objected
to the excentrics and epicycles says in his commentary to Aristo-
tle's Metaphysics that Ibn Tofeil possessed on this subject excellent
theories ², and Ibn Tofeil's pupil, the astronomer Al Betrugi, in
the introduction to his theory of the planets, says of him : "You
know that the illustrious judge Abu Bekar Ibn Tofeil told us
that he had found an astronomical system and principles of the
various movements different from those laid down by Ptolemy
and without admitting either excentrics or epicycles, and with
this system all the motions are represented without error." Ibn
Tofeil was therefore probably the real author of the fairly elabo-
rate system, which his pupil worked out and handed down to us
in a work on the planets, which was translated into Hebrew in
the following century and from that again into Latin, and
published in 1531 ³.
The object of this system was to explain the constitution of
the universe as it really is, and not merely to represent the motions
of the planets geometrically, so as to be able to foretell their
places in the heavens at any time ; and the author (be he Ibn
Tofeil or Al Betrugi alias Alpetragius) specially disclaims any
intention of testing the theory by comparing it with observations
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Aristotle says is true, there is neither epicycle nor excentric, and every-
thing turns round the centre of the Earth.
2. Munk ; Melanges de philosophie juive et arabe. Paris, 1859, p. 412.
3. Alpetragii Arabi Planetarum theorica phisicis rationibus probata, nuperrime
latinis litteris mandata a Calo Calonymos, Hebreo Neapolitano, Venice
1531, 28 ff. folio (published with Sacrobosco's Sphaera). A translation by
the famous Micheal Scot has never been printed, but is still extant in
Paris (Munk, Melanges, p. 519). The principle of the system is described
by Isaac Israeli, who, however, does not mention the author's name (Liber
Jesod Olam, II. 9. Part I. p. XI