The variegated cultural program of Alfonso X is characterized by a strong interest in the scientific areas, specifically in astronomy, also thanks to the recovery and translation of texts performed by the School of Toledo at his court. The "Libros de Saber de Astronomía" (henceforth, the Libros) is an example of the quoted interest: it is a collection, in Castilian, of treaties on scientific subjects, including the study of the so-called "fixed stars", the heavens and instruments. There is a general agreement concerning the dependence of the Libros on a large number of Arabic sources.
Despite its vastness, the Libros has been studied only discontinuously: the only complete critical edition is Rico y Sinobas (1863-1867), which does not include fragmentary witnesses. Nonetheless, the Libros is not only a crucial compendium of the astronomical lore of its time, but also an indirect witness of the Arab-Islamic scientific tradition, which is worthy of a complete discussion. For these reasons, there is a reinvigorated interest in the Libros by the historicists of Science.
This project aims to study the tradition of the Libros on a varied series of aspects: the sampling of its witnesses in their different versions; the investigation of Arabic sources by detection of intertextual cross references. Thus, the focus will be on the translation methods adopted among the scribals at Alfonso X's court, and the comparison of stellar coordinates and of the magnitude scale of the Alphonsine Tables, also by detecting and considering the inhomogeneities of the original data.
Our intention is to shed light on the cultural milieu of the Libros and to achieve an advancement both in textuality and in history of Science in Romance and Arab-Islamic framework, taking advantage of convergences between classically distant disciplines. The output of the project will be the publication of the proceedings of an international congress and a website will illustrate the development of the work.
