Al-Farghānī on the 48 Ptolemaic Constellations: A Newly Discovered Text in Hebrew Translation

The present study reports the discovery of a hitherto unknown account of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, probably by al-Farghānī, or at least from the first phase of the Arabic Ptolemaic astronomical tradition. A Hebrew translation of this account is embedded in the chapter on the fixed stars in Jacob Anatoli’s Hebrew translation (ca. 1230–1240) of al-Farghānī’s Elements, which this paper studies closely. This chapter is a fundamental text for understanding the Jewish interest in the fixed stars from the twelfth century onward. The Arabic text underlying Anatoli’s Hebrew translation was well known in the twelfth century, notably to Abraham Bar Ḥiyya and Abraham Ibn Ezra. Anatoli’s Hebrew translation of this chapter had a strong impact on subsequent Hebrew astronomy, beginning in the second half of the thirteenth century.