al-Hay'a al-saniyya fi al-hay'a al-sunniyya (The Radiant Cosmography)

"Al-Hay'a al-saniyya fi al-hay'a al-sunniyya" ("The Radiant Cosmography, containing the cosmography of tradition") is a treatise by Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (849–911 AH) gathering what the traditions report about the cosmos; its editor Anton Heinen thinks it is the first work of its kind to use the term "al-hay'a" in its title, thereby setting itself up as a rival of the books of hay'a built on Ptolemaic principles. ^{1 3}

Al-Suyuti says in his preface that it is a book of cosmography compiled from the traditions and based on the transmitted reports, so that the intelligent might rejoice and those with eyes take heed. ² Its thirteen chapters treat the Throne and the Footstool; the Tablet and the Pen; the heavens and the earths; the sun, moon and stars; night, day and the hours; water and winds; clouds and rain; thunder, lightning and thunderbolt; the Milky Way and the rainbow; earthquakes; mountains; seas; and the Nile. ² Each chapter gives verses and then reports from Companions and Successors with the names of those who recorded them, such as Ibn Abi Hatim in his Tafsir and Abu al-Shaykh in Kitab al-Azama. ⁴

Al-Suyuti claims no theory of his own in the book; he borrows every fragment from authors he names carefully. ⁵ His chief source is Kitab al-Azama by Abu al-Shaykh al-Isfahani, to which almost every fragment is owed. ⁶ He also draws on al-Khatib al-Baghdadi's treatise on the science of the stars, Ibn al-Sunni's Prophetic Medicine, Ibn Abi al-Dunya's Book of Rain and al-Darimi's Refutation of the Jahmiyya. ⁷

Al-Suyuti lists the work among his writings, but in the category of works that lesser scholars could have written as well, right after his Prophetic Medicine. ⁸ Heinen thinks he wrote both to show his contemporaries he could write on these sciences, as part of his claim to be recognised as a mujtahid and the renewer of his century. ⁸

Heinen counted over sixty manuscripts, the oldest copied fifty to seventy years after the author's death, and edited the text from nine. ⁹ It was the chief source of Ibrahim al-Qaramani al-Amidi's widely copied treatises on "Islamic astronomy", and was excerpted and translated into Turkish. ^{10 1} One copy (Princeton 991, dated 1088 AH) adds that the mountains hold the earth firm "and it is not moved like a ship on the ocean", which Heinen reads as reflecting unease over the debate on the earth's motion in the astronomical literature. ^{11 12}