Book of the constellations (Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābita), by `Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī (d. 986), in Persian translation.
This manuscript is Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's Persian translation of the well-known Arabic treatise, the Book of the Constellations, by the Iranian astronomer `Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī (d. 986). The book includes a star-catalogue (recording star positions in celestial longitude and latitude for the year 964), images of each figure, and a textual description for each of the forty-eight classical constellations. Here, the manuscript combines labelled star diagrams (with no figure drawn around the star-points) and constellation figures: the figures are drawn on separate folios that were inserted later, probably in the seventeenth century.
Codex, 171 folios, ink, colours and gold on paper, Persian text in nasta`liq script, with star tables and labelled diagrams, and tinted drawings of constellation figures (slightly later, inserted on separate folios), Book of the constellations (Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābita), by Abū al-Ḥusayn `Abd al-Raḥmān ibn `Umar al-Ṣūfī (Rayy 903-986 Baghdad), in Persian translation by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (1201-1274), copyist's name erased from colophon (fol. 171v), Yazd, Iran, dated 903H, 1497-1498