Chapter 3

The Conics of Apollonius

§3.1. Introduction

In this chapter I explain the concepts and terminology in the extant

Books of the Conics of Apollonius (ft. 200 RC.; DSB 1,179-193) that are
needed to understand the text of Ibn al-Haytham's reconstruction of Book
VIII. In §3.3 I shall discuss Book VII in some detail, since this book seems to
be related to the lost Book VIII. A more detailed summary of Conics I-VII
may be found in Heath, HGM II,126-174.
We know that the Conics consisted of eight books because Apollonius
enumerates the eight books in his preface to Book I. Only Books I-IV
are extant in Greek, in an edition by Eutocius of Ascalon (ft. A.D. 510, DSB
IV,488-491). In the ninth century, the Banii Miisa (see GAS V, 246-252),
already mentioned in Chapter 1, had the Books I-VII translated into Arabic.
The translators were Hilal ibn Abl Hilal al-I:Iim~1 (GAS V,254), who trans-
lated Books I-IV from the edition of Eutocius, and Thabit ibn Qurra
(GAS V,264-272), who translated Books V-VII, apparently from another
edition. 1 The entire translation was corrected by the Banii Miisa. This
translation is extant in several manuscripts (GAS V,139-140). Book VIII
seems to have disappeared altogether.
The Greek text of Books I-IV has been published several times; the
standard edition is that of J. L. Heiberg (1891-1893). A Latin translation of
the Arabic text of Books V-VII was published by E. Halley in 1710. In
1889, L. Nix edited and translated the Arabic text of the beginning of Book V.
The entire Arabic text of Conics I-VII is currently being edited by G. J.
Toomer.

1 For information on the translation see Ibn al-Nadim, Fihrist, ed. Flugel, 267; tr. Dodge,
p. 637 (Hiliil); and the facsimile of the preface of the Bam1 Miisii, ms. Aya Sofya 4832 f. 224a,
esp. line 15, in TerziogIu, Vorwort (Thiibit).
J. P. Hogendijk, Ibn al-Haytham’s Completion of the Conics
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1985
 Definitions of Cone and Conic Section 31

The extant text ofthe Conics was translated into French by P. Ver Eecke
(1922), who based his translation of Books V-VII on the translation of
Halley. German and English versions of the Conics exist (H. Balsam 1861,
T. L. Heath 1896). However, these are not translations but re-editions in
modern notation. It would certainly be worth while publishing an English
translation of the whole text of Conics I-VII with a detailed commentary,
taking all different versions of the text and all Greek and Arabic commentaries
into account (in the style of Heath's translation of the Elements of Euclid
(1925)).
In this chapter a notation such as (I :43) refers to proposition 43 in Book I
ofthe Conics. For Books I-IV, I shall refer to the numbering ofthe proposi-
tions in the edition of Heiberg. The numbering in the Arabic version is
slightly different from the numbering in Heiberg's edition in the last part
of Book II (see p. 403) and in Book IV. For references to the unedited Arabic
text I have used the manuscripts Oxford, Bodleian Library, Marsh 667
(used by Halley and Nix)2 and Istanbul, Aya Sofya 2762 (copied by Ibn
al-Haytham in 415 H./A.D. 1024V

§3.2. Books I-VI

Apollonius begins the first book of the Conics with a preface. He then
defines the (double-napped) conical surface and the cone (Fig. 19). The
conical sUrface is described by an indefinitely extended straight line, passing
through a fixed point A, and moving around the circumference of a circle CC
not coplanar with A. The cone is the solid contained by the conical surface
between the apex A and the base CC. The cone is right if the straight line through
A and the midpoint of CC is perpendicular to the plane of CC; otherwise it is
oblique (as in Fig. 19).
Apollonius defines a conic section as the intersection of a cone with a
plane not passing through the apex. But in the Conics, a conic section is in
fact the intersection of the indefinitely extended single-napped conic surface
with the plane (compare 1:7); a conic is a line (yp(X~~~). However, inside

2 See Beeston. 1 use the following numbering: f. la = title page; f. Sa = beginning of preface
Book I; f. 83b = beginning of preface Book V; f. 84a = V: 1 ; f. 141 inserted page; f. 163a = end
of Book VII.
3 See Krause, Stambuler Handschriften, 449; 1 use the following numbering: f. 4a = 1:1;
Books II-VII begin on If. 56b, 93b, 137b, 165b, 236b, 267a, respectively.
A facsimile off. 135a, on which Ibn al-Haytham wrote his name and the date, is in Schramm,
Ibn al-Haytham's Weg zur Physik, XI, tr. on pp. IX-X. The date 415 H./A.D. 1024 is confirmed
by an owner's mark on f. 135b: "I acquired this book on Friday, when six (days) of Mul;!arram
of the year 420 had passed" (that is on January 24, A.D. 1029). Arabic text: malaktu hadha
l-kitab jI yawmi I-jum'a /i-sitt khalawna min mu~arram min sana 'ishrln wa-arba' mi'a