2026/05/18 by Juan Acevedo, Inês Bénard da Costa · 1 voice
Physics and Astronomy · Mathematics · Social Sciences · #Historical Astronomy and Related Studies #History and Theory of Mathematics #Islamic Studies and History
paper · doi:10.5281/zenodo.20272672
openalex publication_date 2026/05/18 · openalex created_date 2026/05/19 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/13
The 2021 discovery of a 19th-century Arabic manuscript in the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, initiated a period of intense collaboration between the Museum and the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, culminating in the 2023–24 exhibition ‘Power of the Word V: Circles of Knowledge.’ The first part of this article describes the manuscript, while the second part looks at its contents, a striking visual encyclopaedia, mostly from Safavid sources, entitled Tuḥfat al-Khāqān: Dawāʾir al-ʿUlūm wa-Jadāwil al-Ruqūm (A Gift for the Emperor: Circles of Sciences and Tables of Numerals). Its sections range from cosmogony and alphanumeric cosmology to geography, geomancy and the basics of ʿaqīda, all laid out and wrapped in complex circular, stellated patterns, and tables, totalling one hundred and eight diagrams. We examine and compare page samples from a handful of copies found in libraries around the world, and we offer some reflections on its relevance for the history of ideas and for data visualization technology