The optics of Ibn al-Haytham: Books I-III, On Direct Vision.

• Author: Saliba, George
• Position: 2 vols.

The text of Ibn al-Haytham's Optics, known to the medieval Latin West under the title of Perspectiva or De aspectibus, and whose Latin translation was first published by Friedrich Risner in 1572 A.D., is undoubtedly the most important text on medieval optics. Its importance stems from the fact that it explained for the first time the proper manner in which we see objects, and also represented a spirit most exemplified by Ibn al-Haytham himself, who dealt with classical scientific authority on the most critical basis. Unlike the other text of Ibn al-Haytham, his al-Shukuk ala Batlamyus (Dubitationes in Ptolemaeum), which contained the most cogent criticism of Ptolemy's Almagest, Planetary Hypothesis, and Optics, but offered no alternatives to the sciences of antiquity discussed in these books, this work is devoted to a reconstruction of the science of optics. It is not surprising therefore that, once it was made available in a Latin translation, Ibn al-Haytham's Optics became the most popular reference text for all subsequent works on optics, and was one of the earliest books to be printed on the subject.

But despite its fame and sophistication, this work of Ibn Al-Haytham still remains inaccessible in its totality to English and Arabic readers alike, in spite of the efforts of Sabra, who produced the volume under review as well as the Arabic edition on which it is based. This does not mean that a small circle of historians of science did not know about it. Note the most detailed technical commentary written about it by Mustafa Nazif (2 vols. [Cairo, 1942-43]), listed with full details in the bibliography appended to the second volume of the present text.

The text under review is a translation (vol. 1), with commentary and notes (vol. 2), of the Arabic edition published in one volume by A. I. Sabra, six years earlier, in the Arabic Heritage Series of The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters of Kuwait. As is stated on both the Arabic and English covers, this text includes only the books (maqalas) relating to direct vision, namely, maqilas I, II and III of the original Kitab al-Manazir of Ibn al-Haytham, which was composed in seven books. In a sense, the present translation, like the earlier edition, should be considered as work in progress, awaiting the production of the full text of Ibn al-Haytham on Optics. The contents of maqalas IV-VII, dealing with reflection, images, mistakes of vision due to reflection and their causes, and...