Copies of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s Book on the Star Constellations as Patronage Objects and Their Properties

Abstract

In this paper we discuss a number of copies of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s Book on the Star Constellations with the aim to elucidate which of them can be justifiably called “patronage object” and which properties they share. We argue that such an object is always a material, not merely an intellectual product. Thus, the analysis of the patronage status of a scientific work needs to go beyond its scholarly content and narrative performance and include features of execution, purpose and addressee of copying and acts of re-appropriating the work on its various scholarly, cultural and political levels. We present a few examples to demonstrate the usefulness of such a holistic approach to the question of what is a patronage object in the mathematical sciences.