A second-order interpolation scheme described in the Zīj-i Īlkhānī (Q1060198)

The author has already contributed several studies to the theory of interpolation in Medieval Islamic literature. His Ph.D. dissertation at Teachers College, Columbia University (1976), which is devoted to the subject of interpolation, is unfortunately not yet available in print. The present study is devoted to a section in the work of the thirteenth century astronomer Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 1274), called Zīj-i Ilkhānī, which was not included in his dissertation. Ṭūsī's work is a regular astronomical handbook, and in it he had to give instructions for finding the position of planets at various times. These instructions are accompanied by tables computed for ten-day periods. But when planets begin to accelerate, the linear interpolation which would have been enough to compute values within the ten-day periods becomes quickly inaccurate. To adjust for that Ṭūsī proposes a formula, which essentially describes the same second order interpolation technique that the author had published in 1978 as belonging to Abu Ja`far al-Khāzin (10th century). Moreover, the same technique had been attributed to Jamshīd Ghiyāth al-Dīn al-Kāshī (d. 1429) by \textit{E. S. Kennedy} (1959; Zbl 0101.007). In this article, the author establishes that the so-called Kāshi's interpolation scheme was actually invented sometime during the tenth century, and was already described in the work of Ṭūsī from where Kāshī may have got it. He then follows that with a translation of the section in Ṭūsi's work, and appends to it a mathematical commentary.