Space●●●●●Difficulty 5 of 5

Did Copernicus borrow his maths from the astronomers of Maragha?

A 13th-century device that turns two circles into a straight line shows up in Copernicus's planetary models. Historians still can't show how it got there, or whether it had to.

▶ Start the story

Possibly, but nobody has found the proof, and some scholars think he did not need to. The story starts with a flaw. Ptolemy's equant was a point offset from the centre of a planet's orbit, around which the planet moved with uniform angular velocity; it violated the principle of uniform circular motion, and many medieval astronomers considered it a serious defect.

In 1247, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi proposed a fix in his Commentary on the Almagest: a small circle rotating inside a larger one twice its size, so that a point on the small circle oscillates back and forth along a straight line. It is now called the Tusi couple, and it was later used extensively as a substitute for the equant. Al-Tusi directed the Maragheh observatory, founded in the mid-13th century under the patronage of the Ilkhanid ruler Hulagu, and it became the first observatory to outlive its founder.

Two ways to handle a planet's uneven speed

Ptolemy's equant

  • A point offset from the centre
  • Uniform motion around that point
  • Broke uniform circular motion

Tusi couple

  • A small circle inside one twice its size
  • Two simple circular motions
  • A point oscillates along a straight line

Then, in the 16th century, Copernicus used what is now known as the Urdi lemma and the Tusi couple in the same planetary models as found in Arabic sources, and the exact replacement of the equant by two epicycles in his Commentariolus was found earlier in a work by Ibn al-Shatir. This has led some scholars to argue that Copernicus must have had access to some yet-to-be-identified work. But no likely candidate has come to light, and other scholars argue that Copernicus could well have developed these ideas independently.

So the honest answer is that the maths is strikingly similar, a possible route has been suggested, and the chain of evidence is missing. Ibn al-Shatir's model was firmly geocentric, while Copernicus's put the Sun near the centre.

From Maragha to 1543
  1. 1247

    Al-Tusi proposes the couple in his Commentary on the Almagest

  2. Mid-13th c.

    Maragheh observatory founded under Hulagu, directed by al-Tusi

  3. 1543

    Copernicus's model is published

  4. 1966

    E. S. Kennedy coins the name 'Tusi couple'

Quiz me

0/3

  1. 1.What problem did the Tusi couple help solve?
  2. 2.Why can't historians simply say Copernicus copied Ibn al-Shatir?
  3. 3.Which feature distinguishes Ibn al-Shatir's system from Copernicus's, despite identical mathematics?

Recap

Same maths in Maragha, Damascus and Copernicus, but the chain of transmission is unproven.

💡 A trick to remember it · Two circles, one straight line: the maths is shared, the proof of the road is missing.

Surprising fact · No document has been found that carried the idea to Copernicus, and some scholars think he could have worked it out himself.

Sources (5)

No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (16 claims) cites at least one of these.

  1. [1]Tusi couple · Wikipedia
  2. [2]Copernican heliocentrism · Wikipedia
  3. [3]Ibn al-Shatir · Wikipedia
  4. [4]Nasir al-Din al-Tusi · Wikipedia
  5. [5]Maragheh observatory · Wikipedia
More lessons in 🌌 Space (3) See all space lessons →

One more light on your map.

Get one lesson like this every day, about the things you love. Free, in two or five minutes.

Get the share card for this lesson ↗