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.Al-Fazârï is the name of the person most directly connected with the transmission of a Sanskrit work on astronomy-the Mahäsiddhänta(l) belonging to what later became known as the Brahmapakfa-to the Arabs in the early part of the eighth decade of the eighth century of the Christian era. This was not the first infusion of Indian astronomical theories into Islam; prior to it was the mediating influence of the Zij al-Shâh in the versions of Khusrau Anüshirwän and of Yazdijird III, the composition of the Zij al-Arkand and its derivatives at Qandah&r in 735 and after, and that, of the Zij al-Harqän in 742. The versions of the Zij al-Sháh and the Zij al-Arkand largely depend on the ärdharätrika system developed by Aryabhata. But, despite al-Fazärl's importance, great confusion exists concerning both his and his father's names and their works.
In his valuable discussion of al-Fazârl, Nallino (pp. 209-15) concludes that his name was probably Ibrahim ibn Habib, and that he made an astrolabe and wrote a zij based on the Sindhind; Nallino is followed by Brockelmann (Suppl. I, 391) and Kennedy (No. 2). Suter, on the other hand, speaks of two personalities: an Ibrâhîm ibn Habib (p. 3) who wrote various works and constructed an astrolabe, and his son Muhammad (pp. 4-5) who was involved in the translation of the Sindhind. The confusion is due to the inaccuracies of the Islàmic biographers and bibliographers and to the existence of several contemporaries bearing the name al-Fazârl. There is, for instance, an Abü cAbdalläh Muhammad ibn Ibrâhîm ibn Hftblb ibn Sulaymán ibn Samura ibn Jundab al-Fazärl (Fihrist, p. 79), who was reputed as an authority on geomancy, and a Muhammad ibn Ibrâhîm al-Fazärl (Fihrist, p. 164), who was a "slave poet"; but elsewhere (Fihrist, p. 273; cf. al-Mas'üdl, Murüj al-dhahab, 8, 290-91, and Ibn al-Qifyî, p. 57) Ibn al-Nadlm writes of an Abü Ishàq Ibrâhîm ibn Habib al-Fazârl of the family of Samura ibn Jundab, who was the first in Islâm to make a plane astrolabe and who wrote a Kitäb al-qafida fi cilm al-nujüm (Poem on the Science of the Stars), a Kitäb al-miqyäs Wl-zawäl (Measurement of Noon), a Kitäb al-zij 'old sini al-cArab (Astronomical Tables According to the Years...