Some Late Medieval Tables in Hebrew for Planetary Equations

In this paper the focus is on tables for planetary equations in three sets of astronomical tables in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew characters) that depart from the standard tradition represented by the zij of al-Battānī (d. 929). The Persian Tables in Hebrew by Solomon ben Elijah of Thessalonika (late fourteenth century) is an adaptation of the Īlkhānī zij by Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274) with a Byzantine Greek intermediary. An anonymous set of tables in Hebrew is an adaptation of the Šāmil zij the author of which is generally assumed to be Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (fl. 1240). And Joseph b. Isaac Ibn Waqār (fourteenth century) composed a set of astronomical tables in Judeo- Arabic in which he referred to Ibn al-Kammād (fl. 1116). These tables illustrate the ingenuity of medieval astronomers in offering new presentations of tables, without changing the models or the underlying parameters. They also reveal the ongoing interest by members of the Jewish community in developments in Islamic astronomy.