Details

Subject(s)

• Astronomers—Spain—Córdoba—History [Browse]
• Aeronautics—Spain—Córdoba—History [Browse]
• Muslim scientists—Spain—Andalusia—History [Browse]
• Scientific apparatus and instruments—History—To 1500 [Browse]
• ʻAbbās Ibn Firnās 810-887 [Browse]

Series

Oxford scholarship online. [More in this series]

Summary note

'A Bridge to the Sky' explores the close connections between science, arts, and visual culture as they developed in the medieval Islamic lands. It presents a significant study of the career of ʻAbbas Ibn Firnas, (d. 887), the most celebrated 'scientist' and polymath of early Islamic Spain, best known for conducting an experiment that has been celebrated as a milestone in the history of human flight.

Notes

Also issued in print: 2024.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Target audience

Specialized.

Source of description

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on November 20, 2023).

Language note

In English with selections in Arabic with English translations.

Contents

• Cover
• A Bridge to the Sky
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Dates and Terms
• 'Abbās Ibn Firnās and His Career: Selected Passages from Ibn Ḥayyān
• I. Overview of ʿAbbās's Character and Career
• II. On ʿAbbās's Background and Skills
• III. On the Aeronautics Experiment
• IV. On the Meteorological Chamber
• V. On Two Precision Instruments Made for 'Abd al-​Raḥmān II and Muḥammad I
• VI. His Poem on the Villa (Munya) al-​Rusāfa
• Introduction: Ibn Firnas and His Legacy
• Arts and Intellect
• 1. The Sage of al-​Andalus
• Remembering a Ninth-​Century Polymath
• The Informants
• A Portrait
• His Intellectual World
• Conclusion
• 2. Mind and Hand
• Inventor, Designer, Maker
• The Earliest Andalusi Instruments
• Signatures, Makers, and Making
• The Celestial Globe of Ibrahim ibn Saʿīd al-​Sahli al-​Wazzan
• 3. Visualizing Science at Home
• Representing the Heavens at Home
• Visualizing Ibn Firnas's Celestial Creation: A Painted Astronomical Vault?
• Art, Science, and Medieval Diplomacy
• Andalusi Automata: Al-​Muradi's Kitab al-​Asrar Fi Nataʼij al-​Afkar
• An International Taste for Automata
• Science, the Occult, and Intellectual Culture
• Architecture as Scientific Instrument: The Abbasid Nilometer
• 4. Where Eagles and Vultures Dare
• Imagining Flight-​Early Visual Sources
• Comparing the Sources
• The Earliest Source
• Palace of Science: Al-​Rusafa
• Vultures
• Imagining a Medieval "Flight"
• 5. Epilogue: Echoes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index.

Show 43 more Contents items

ISBN

• 0-19-091327-4
• 0-19-091325-8
• 0-19-091326-6

OCLC

1410123120

Doi

• 10.1093/oso/9780190913243.001.0001

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