From Maragha to Copernicus: tracing a transmission claim
Copernicus’s planetary models resemble earlier work by astronomers in the Islamic world. Which steps in the possible transmission are documented, and which are missing?
Which records we can check
Uppsala University Library's catalogue records Copernicana 4, a composite working bundle that contains printed Alfonsine Tables and Regiomontanus tables owned and annotated by Copernicus, together with his handwritten notes. The research case rates the bundle's identity and Copernicus's annotations as verified facts. Uppsala University Library / Alvin ↗
The notes revisited
Ragep's 2016 study revisits the Uppsala notes in relation to Ibn al-Shatir. It is the kind of close technical comparison that a transmission claim has to rest on: not a general resemblance, but specific parameters and constructions. Journal for the History of Astronomy ↗
The Mercury models
A 2019 study by Nikfahm-Khubravan and Ragep compares the Mercury models of Ibn al-Shatir and Copernicus in detail. The research case rates the broad claims highly: Islamicate astronomical material reaching Renaissance Italy before and during Copernicus's formative years is treated as verified, and Copernicus working with European material carrying that ancestry as strong evidence. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy ↗
A possible intermediary
Morrison's 2014 article in Isis presents Moses Galeano, a scholar who travelled to the Veneto around 1500, knew theories pioneered by Ibn al-Shatir, and moved in Jewish scholarly networks with Christian European contacts. The study is explicit that direct contact with Copernicus is not proven; the research case rates a personal handover as unsupported. Isis ↗
Why a direct route is still uncertain
Blasjo's 2014 critique of the arguments for Maragha influence on Copernicus is part of the record too. With it in view, the specific claim that Ibn al-Shatir's non-Ptolemaic mathematics reached Copernicus through Italian networks is graded a plausible hypothesis, not a fact. Journal for the History of Astronomy ↗
Similarity, route, and personal contact are different claims
A resemblance, a route, and a handover are three different claims. Which of them does a matching diagram in two manuscripts actually establish?