Present address MIT Center for Space Research, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 Adjunct Astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218

the first part of the paper describes the persian translation of naṣīr al-dīn al-ṭūsī’s taḥrīr kitāb uqlīdis by quṭb al-dīn al-shīrāzī, with a primary focus on his appendix to book i. part of a larger encyclopedic collection, al-shīrāzī’s translation continued to be read for centuries. as evidence of the work’s influence, al-shīrāzī’s appendix to book i was included in a nineteenth century prin...

one of the controversial issues concerning the qur’ān in the contemporary era has been the claim of the existence of mythological stories in the qur’ān. primarily, muḥammad aḥmad khalaf allāh set forth this claim in his al-fann al-qaṣaṣī. one of khalaf allāh’s evidences for his claim is that on nine occasions the qur’ān has been accused of being mythical by the polytheists and the almighty god ...

The typical extinction curve for the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), in contrast to that for the Galaxy, has no bump at 2175 Å and has a steeper rise into the far ultraviolet. For the Galaxy the interpretation of the extinction and, therefore, the dust content of the interstellar medium has been greatly assisted by measurements of the wavelength dependence of the polarization. To the present no s...