Abu al-Saqr Abd al-Aziz ibn Uthman ibn Ali al-Qabisi, generally known as Al-Qabisi, (Latinised as Alchabitius or Alcabitius), and sometimes known as Alchabiz, Abdelazys, Abdilaziz (Arabic: 'Abd al-Azîz, عبدالعزيز القبيصي), (died 967) was a Muslim astrologer, astronomer, and mathematician.
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿUthmān al-Qabīṣī was a prominent astrologer of the 10th century. On the basis of a reference in the Fihrist, he is generally regarded as a contemporary of Ibn al-Nadim. He was probably born in al-Qabīṣ, a place-name associated with two locations in Iraq, one near Mosul and another near Samarra. He may have been of Persian descent.
His principal surviving work is al-Madkhal ilā ṣināʿat aḥkām al-nujūm (“Introduction to the Craft of the Judgments of the Stars”), which was dedicated to Sayf al-Dawla, the Hamdanid ruler of Aleppo. The work was translated into Latin by John of Seville in 1144, and a French translation, probably based on the Latin version, was produced by Pèlerin de Prusse in 1362.
Three shorter works by al-Qabīṣī also survive in a single manuscript held in the Hagia Sophia collection in Istanbul. These are a treatise on types of numbers and computational procedures, Risāla fī al-abʿād wa-al-ajrām (“Treatise on Bodies and Distances”), and an exposition of Al-Farghani's Book of Seasons. The first two works were likewise dedicated to Sayf al-Dawla.
Al-Qabīṣī's writings had considerable influence in medieval Europe. A Latin work printed in Lyon between 1519 and 1523 appears to be a commentary either on al-Madkhal ilā ṣināʿat aḥkām al-nujūm or possibly on one of al-Qabīṣī's lost works. The commentary was written by John of Saxony, a 14th-century astronomer associated with the University of Paris.
