Ibn Sahl (mathematician)
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Ibn Sahl was a Persian mathematician and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age, associated with the Buyid court of Baghdad. Despite attempts by professionals in the field of onomastics, neither his coun
Reproduction of Millī MS 867 fol. 7r, showing his discovery of the law of refraction (from Rashed, 1990). The lower part of the figure shows a representation of a plano-convex lens (at the right) and its principal axis (the intersecting horizontal line). The curvature of the convex part of the lens brings all rays parallel to the horizontal axis (and approaching the lens from the right) to a focal point on the axis at the left.
Gravure originale du compas parfait par Abū Sahl al Qūhī
Book of Optics
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The Book of Optics is a seven-volume treatise on optics and other fields of study composed by the medieval Arab scholar Ibn al-Haytham, known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen.
Ibn Sahl (mathematician)
…al-harrāqāt "The book of burners". Ibn Sahl is the first Muslim scholar known to have studied Ptolemy's Optics, and as such an important precursor to the Book of Optics by Ibn Al-Haytham (Alhazen), written some thirty years later. Ibn Sahl dealt with the optical properties of curved mirrors and lenses and has been…
Cover page for Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics in the print edition from 1572
Front page of the Latin Opticae Thesaurus, which included Alhazen's Book of Optics, showing rainbows, the use of parabolic mirrors to set ships on fire, distorted images caused by refraction in water, and other optical effects.