Physics in the medieval Islamic world
The natural sciences saw various advancements during the Golden Age of Islam, adding a number of innovations to the Transmission of the Classics. During this period, Islamic theology was encouraging of thinkers to find knowledge. Thinkers from this period included Al-Farabi, Abu Bishr Matta, Ibn Sina, al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham and Ibn Bajjah. These works and the important commentaries on them were the wellspring of science during the medieval period. They were translated into Arabic, the lingua franca of this period.
Cover of Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics
14th century manuscript of al-Mulakhkhas fi al-Hay’ah, Jaghmini's treatise on astronomy
Claudius Ptolemy was an Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science. The first was his astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, originally entitled Mathematical Treatise. The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika but more commonly known as the Tetrábiblos, from the Koine Greek meaning "Four Books", or by its Latin equivalent Quadripartite.
Portrait of Ptolemy by Justus van Gent and Pedro Berruguete (1476)
Engraving of a crowned Ptolemy being guided by Urania, by Gregor Reisch (1508), from Margarita Philosophica showing an early conflation of the mathematician with the royal house of Ptolemaic Egypt, with the same last name.
Pages from the Almagest in Arabic translation showing astronomical tables.
A depiction of the non-Ptolemaic Universe with no epicycles, possibly from 500 years before Ptolemy, as described in the Planetary Hypotheses by Bartolomeu Velho (1568).