Description of the 48 Ptolemaic constellations, based on the Arabic translations of Ptolemy’s Almagest, with detailed critique for each of the 1,025 stars in Ptolemy’s star catalogue, based on Ṣūfī’s own observations. Two drawings of each constellation were added, one “as seen in the sky,” and one “as seen on the (celestial) globe.” King Alfonso X of Castile (r. 1252–84) had a free recension of the book, with constellation drawings, included in his Libros del saber de astronomia; an Italian translation of this appeared in 1341. Perhaps also in the 13th c., a text corpus was compiled in Sicily, where drawings of the 48 constellations from Ṣūfī’s book were combined with Ptolemy’s star catalogue (in the Latin translation of Gerard of Cremona from the Arabic) and extracts from some other astronomical and astrological texts (the so-called “Ṣūfī Latinus corpus,” of which 8 manuscripts are known today). In 1515, two maps of the northern and southern celestial hemispheres were printed in Nuremberg after woodcuts made by Albrecht Dürer.  One of four portraits of important astronomers added by Dürer to the map of the northern hemisphere is an imaginary portrait of Ṣūfī (here called “Azophi,” with a medieval Latin spelling). In the 1530s, the German astronomer Peter Apian made use of Ṣūfī’s book, mentioned some old Arabic asterisms, and even converted them into drawn constellation figures on a star map. Ṣūfī’s stellar nomenclature—in Arabic script—was also used on a celestial globe by J. A. Colom (ca 1635) and on the “King’s Globe” (1681–83) by V. Coronelli. In 1665 Thomas Hyde published in Oxford an edition of Ulugh Beg’s zīj; in the accompanying commentary he quoted from Ṣūfī’s book. From here, G. Piazzi picked up around a hundred Arabic star names, which he added to the 1814 edition of his Palermo star catalogue, thereby introducing them into modern astronomy.  [BEA, Kunitzsch] References: Kunitzsch, Paul. “The Astronomer Abū ’l-Ḥusayn al-Ṣūfī and His Book on the Constellations.” Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften 3 (1986): 56–81. Reprinted in Kunitzsch, The Arabs and the Stars, XI. Northampton: Variorum, 1989; Schjellerup, H. C. F. C., trans. Description des étoiles fixes. St. Pétersbourg, 1874. (French translation of Ṣūfī’s text.) ; al-Ṣūfī, `Abd al-Raḥmān ibn `Umar. Kitāb Ṣuwar al-Kawākib. Frankfurt, 1986. (Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Marsh 144.)