{"product_id":"the-star-keeper-narin-hikma-9798259097407","title":"The Star Keeper: Thabit ibn Qurra and the Ancient Knowledge He Carried for the World","description":"\u003cb\u003eHe saved the mathematics that built the modern world. Almost no one knows his name.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 836 CE, in a desert city that worshipped the planets, a boy was born into the last community of pagan star-worshippers in the medieval world. His people - the Sabians of Harran - prayed to the Moon, calculated celestial orbits as acts of devotion, and kept alive an ancient tradition that the great monotheisms of the age had all but erased.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat boy was \u003cb\u003eThabit ibn Qurra\u003c\/b\u003e - and he would grow up to save the mathematical legacy of ancient Greece.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDriven out of his own community for his unconventional views, Thabit made his way to Baghdad - the greatest city on earth - where he joined the most ambitious intellectual project of the medieval world: the translation of all available Greek scientific knowledge into Arabic. Over decades of patient, rigorous work, he translated the \u003ci\u003ecomplete mathematical corpus of Archimedes\u003c\/i\u003e - texts whose Greek originals would eventually be lost. Without Thabit, much of what Archimedes wrote would be gone forever.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut Thabit was not only a translator. He discovered a theorem on amicable numbers. He measured the length of the solar year to within two seconds of the modern accepted value - \u003ci\u003ein the ninth century, without telescopes\u003c\/i\u003e. He revised Euclid's \u003ci\u003eElements\u003c\/i\u003e, challenged the parallel postulate in ways that anticipated non-Euclidean geometry by a thousand years, and founded the science of statics with his work on the lever. He became royal astronomer to the Caliph of all Islam - a pagan heretic at the center of the Islamic world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Star Keeper\u003c\/i\u003e is the story of what it means to carry something irreplaceable across a dangerous distance.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is a story about outsiderness - and the particular kind of seeing that only outsiders can do. About the people history forgets and the knowledge they saved. About a man who never fully belonged anywhere, and who, precisely because he didn't belong, was able to give everything he knew to everyone who came after.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCopernicus cited him. Medieval Europe built on his work. The calculus of Newton and Leibniz traces, through a long chain, to the Archimedes that Thabit preserved. And yet his name is almost unknown outside a narrow circle of historians of mathematics.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book gives him his place.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Narin Hikma\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798259097407\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/27\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 278\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.83lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.58d","brand":"Narin Hikma","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48588521373951,"sku":"9798259097407","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-star-keeper-narin-hikma-9798259097407","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}