An Astronomical Treatise by Mūsā Jālīnūs alias Moses Galeano

This article presents an edition and translation of an astronomical text by Mūsā Jālīnūs (a.k.a. Moses Galeano) entitled An Account of Some of the Impossibilities. The edition and translation is based on the only known manuscript, Istanbul Topkapı III Ahmet 3302/2 fol. 102b-109a, perhaps copied in the ninth Islamic century. An Account of Some of the Impossibilities is important for three reasons. First, it provides additional evidence for the identification of Mūsā Jālīnūs with Moses ben Judah Galeano. The final chapter of the text reproduces, verbatim, material from Joseph ibn Joseph ibn Naḥmias' The Light of the World, a text to which Moses ben Judah Galeano referred in his Hebrew work Taʿalumot Ḥokhmah (Puzzles of Wisdom). This final chapter is the second reason why An Account of Some of the Impossibilities is important, as it is evidence for the reception of Ibn Naḥmias' The Light of the World, the only known text on theoretical astronomy written by a Jew in any variety of Arabic. Third, An Account of Some of the Impossibilities is further evidence of scientific exchanges among Jews, Muslims, and Christians.