ALMAGEST

, the name of a celebrated book composed by Ptolemy; being a collection of a great number of the observations and problems of the ancients, relating to geometry and astronomy, but especially the latter. And being the sirst work of this kind which has come down to us, and containing a catalogue of the fixed stars, with their places, beside numerous records and observations of eclipses, the motions of the planets, &c, this work will ever be held dear and valuable to the cultivators of astronomy.

In the original Greek it is called suntacis m<*>gish, the great composition or collection. And to the word megish, megiste, the Arabians joined the particle al, and thence called it Almaghesti, or, as we call it, from them, the Almagest.

Ptolemy was born about the year of Christ 69, and died in 147, and wrote this work, consisting of 13 books, at Alexandria in Egypt, where the Arabians found it on the capture of that kingdom. It was by them translated out of Greek, into Arabic, by order of the caliph Almaimon, about the year 827; and sirst into Latin about 1230, by favour of the emperor Frederic II. The Greek text however was not known in Europe till about the beginning of the 15th century, when it was brought from Constantinople, then taken by the Turks, by George, a monk of Trabezond, who translated it into Latin, which translation has several times been published.

Riccioli, an Italian jesuit, also published, in 1651, a body of Astronomy, which, in imitation of Ptolemy, he called Almagestum Novum, the New Almagest; being a large collection of ancient and modern observations and discoveries, in the science of Astronomy.