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Comes, Mercè
« The Possible Scientific Exchange between the Courts of Hūlāgū and Alfonso X », in : N. Pourjavady & Ž. Vesel, éds., Sciences, techniques et instruments dans le monde iranien (Xe-XIXe siècle). Téhéran, Presses Universitaires d'Iran / Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 2004, pp. 29-50.
The author investigates a number of possible indications for scientific exchange between Andalusia and Iran in the second half of the 13th century. She first mentions the political contacts that existed between Alfonso X and various courts in the Eastern Islamic world, especially that of Hülegü Khan in Maragha. Then she discusses a number of similarities between astronomical achievements of Alfonso and those of astronomers at the Maragha observatory. These include:
1) the so-called cuadrante sennero vs. the double quadrant of al-‘Urḍī;
2) the addition of an alidade to the armillary sphere;
3) the occurrence of the value 23;32,30 for the obliquity of the ecliptic in the Tunesian astronomical handbook of Ibn Isḥāq and an Arabic handbook written in Tibet in 1366, whose contents might have passed through Maragha;
4) the occurrence of a model for trepidation in the Tadhkira of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī;
5) the use of the so-called “meridian of water” in a number of geographical tables from Iran; and
6) the addition of planetary influences for all stars in the Alfonsine and Ṭūsīan recensions of the Suwar al-kawākib by ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī.
The author concludes that many of the sources involved require further study before the connections can be established with certainty.

