Al-Kindi And His Treatise On Light Rays

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Vijaya Varma is a Theoretical Physicist with a PhD and DIC from Imperial College London. He taught in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, University of Delhi for almost forty years and retired as the Dean Planning of the University. He then spent eight years helping set up Ambedkar University Delhi as Advisor Planning, before taking up a National Fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He divided his time between teaching, research and school science education and was awarded the Regional Prize for the Development of Scientific Educational Material by The World Academy of Sciences in 2015.

Hatem Widyan is a Theoretical Physicist with a PhD from the University of Delhi. Since 1999 he has taught physics in different Universities in Jordan. He is currently a Professor of Physics at Al al-Bayt University in Jordan. He has held several administrative positions in Jordanian Universities such as Dean Academic Research and Dean Faculty of Aviation. He divides his time between teaching and research.

Abü Yüsuf Ya'qüb ibn 'Ishaq al-Kindi lived in Baghdad in the ninth century when the 'Abbasid Caliphate was at the peak of its political powers. He is considered to be the Philosopher of the Arabs. He was a polymath who wrote on subjects as diverse as mathematics, physics, astronomy, meteorology, metallurgy, the making of swords, music, and of course philosophy. He was placed in charge of the House of Wisdom by the Caliph Al-Ma'mün, where he headed the great Translation Movement that undertook the translation of Greek, Syriac, Persian, Sanskrit and Chinese texts into Arabic. This was in large measure responsible for the growth of Arab learning and scholarship, which in turn triggered the subsequent renaissance in Europe.

This book is a translation and commentary on Al-Kindī's treatise on Optics in Arabic, which is held in the collection of the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna. The treatise attempts to explain, using the basic laws of reflection, how a system of hinged plane mirrors could have been used by Archimedes to focus the sun's rays and burn the Roman armada laying siege to Syracuse around 210 BCE. It is evident from the treatise that the Arab scholars of ninth century Baghdad knew many aspects of geometrical optics whose discovery is often attributed to Europeans in the seventeenth century.

We present here a translation, with commentary, of Kitab Yaqub ibn 'Ishaq al-Kindi fi al-Shu'a'at - a treatise on light rays in Arabic by the distinguished philosopher-scientist Abū Yūsuf Ya'qüb ibn 'Ishaq al-Kindi (805-870) which is to be found in the collection of Arabian and Persian manuscripts' in the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Bankipore, Patna. It is not known how this manuscript came into the Library's collection. However the scribe, in an annotation at the end, says that the copy was completed during the second third of the night of Tuesday the seventh day of the eleventh month of Dhu al-Qa'dah of 890 of the Hijri Era (HE) corresponding to 15 November 1485 (Julian day 2263773). The transcription was done at the scribe's residence opposite the Madrasah al-Kamiliyah in Cairo³, the night before the morning of his travel, some 630 years after the death of al-Kindi (the ruins of the Madrasah can still be seen today). The scribe also tells us that the copy exhibits all the defects that are to be found in the original.

It seems that the Khuda Bakhsh manuscript was copied from an carlier manuscript, now in the collection of the Tareq Rajab Museum in Kuwait. This earlier manuscript was itself copied, presumably from the original al-Kindī treatise, in the month of Shawwal in 290 HE (September 903), only some 30 to 35 years after the death of al-Kindi and carries an annotation that a copy of this copy was made by the scribe 'Umar ibn 'abd al-'Aziz al-Fayyūmi, which there is good reason to believe, is the copy lying in the collection of the Khuda Bakhsh Library."

The present translation of the Khuda Bakhsh manuscript from the Arabic into English has been done jointly with Hatem Widyan from Jordan, who in the 1990s was a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics of the University of Delhi where I taught for many years. The project of translation began in the late 1990s and was shelved in 1999 as the first draft was nearing completion. This was when we became aware of a translation of the same manuscript into French by Professor Roshdi Rashed. However, we now realise this was a short-sighted decision and our translation should have been taken to completion, if for no other reason than, whether the material is in Arabic or French, it remains Greek for most Indian scholars.

The opportunity to resume the translation arose when I received a National Fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. In the meanwhile, Dr. Hatem Widyan had returned to Jordan and become a Professor in the Department of Physics at the Ål al-Bayt University in Mafraq. All our subsequent correspondence had to be done by e-mail. What facilitated this process was the great improvement in connectivity, in speed as well as bandwidth, in the intervening years. This enabled us to revise and improve the entire first draft of the translation. It also allowed us to compare our translation with the French translation of the manuscript by Professor Rashed whenever any doubt arose. In the process we benefited from his scholarship. We have incorporated into our translation the two missing passages of the original manuscript that he was by his diligence able to reconstruct. For all this we owe Professor Rashed a debt of gratitude.

I grew up in Patna, and even as a student, I became aware that the Khuda Bakhsh Library on the banks of the Ganges in Bankipore was considered one of the jewels of the city. It was housed in a quaint Moghul-British style building on one of Patna's busiest roads linking the new Patna to the old City. On one of my visits home in the 1970s after I had started teaching Physics at the University of Delhi, 1 decided to visit the Library. In its Catalogues 1 discovered an entry on al-Kindi's treatise. Intrigued by its description as a work on Optics, I requested to see the manuscript. I was thrilled to hold in my hands a manuscript that was some 500 years old. It was written on specially treated paper or parchment, golden yellow in colour, with beautiful calligraphy in black and red ink and even more beautifully drawn diagrams that would do any present-day draftsman proud. It consisted of some 35 folios and as I leafed through them it became clear from the diagrams that it dealt with geometrical optics and the reflection of light rays from mirrors. Even though I knew no Arabic, I requested a photocopy in anticipation of having it translated one day.

This had happened sometime in the late 1970s and I had to wait till the mid-1990s to find out about the contents, when Hatem Widyan, a student from Jordan joined our department to work for his PhD. It was then that I learned that the manuscript was concerned with the incident of Archimedes burning the Roman ships at harbour during the siege of Syracuse (215-212 BCE) at the end of which he was to lose his life at the hands of an invading soldier.

The catalogue entry' of the Khuda Bakhsh Library only states that al-Kindi's is a very valuable treatise, believed to be unique (the existence of another copy extant in the collection of the Tareq Rajab Museum in Kuwait was then not known). The entry also states that the copy is written in Naskh and dates from 1485.

This book is divided into two parts. The first sets the scene as it were for the translation. The first chapter deals with al-Kindi - his life, his times, his philosophy and his works. This is followed by a brief historical introduction to the 'Abbasid caliphate under whose patronage al-Kindi carried out his work. We then give a brief history of burning-mirrors and this is followed by a summary of the salient features of al-Kindi's manuscript on light rays. The second part of the book consists of our translation accompanied by a facsimile of the manuscript reproduced by permission of the Khuda Bakhsh Library.

Khuda Bakhsh and his Library

The Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library is one of the National Libraries of India. It is famous for its collection of rare Arabic and Persian manuscripts and paintings. It was inaugurated in 1891 by Khan Bahadur Khuda Bakhsh with about 4,000 manuscripts, the core of which he had inherited from his father. Khuda Bakhsh (1842-1908) was born in Chhapra in Bihar and was educated in Patna and Calcutta. He was a Peshkar by profession and became a Government Pleader in 1880. He was made a Khan Bahadur in 1881 and elevated as Chief Justice at the Nizam's Court in Hyderabad in 1895. In 1903 he was made a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in recognition of his many achievements.

His library was his life's work and he collected his manuscripts often with the help of buyers in centres of Arabic and Persian scholarship. He spent whatever he earned on its growth and died penniless, having to borrow money for his medical treatment. The British Museum had made him an offer for his entire collection after the library had acquired a worldwide reputation. Turning the offer down, he is reported to have said,

"I am a poor man and they offered me a princely sum, but would I ever part for money with that to which my father and I have dedicated our lives? No, the collection is for Patna and the gift will be laid at the feet of the Patna public."

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Chetan Singh, the Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Shimla, Shri Prem Chand its Secretary and the management and administration of the Institute not only for the award of a National Fellowship which made it possible to bring this translation and commentary to a conclusion but also for creating the warm and welcoming ambience at the Institute which made the task so pleasurable. Thank you Terry for all your TLC through two cardiac infarctions and the painstaking translation from the French whenever required.