Book on Knowing the Ascensions of the Signs between the Quadrants of the Sphere

"The Book on Knowing the Ascensions of the Signs between the Quadrants of the Sphere" is a treatise by al-Battani listed by Ibn al-Nadim, al-Qifti and Ibn Khallikan among his writings; it has not reached us. ^{2 3 1}

Orientalists understood the title variously: de Slane rendered it "knowledge of the rising-places of the zodiacal signs in the interval between the quarters of the sphere" and guessed it computed the amplitude of the signs for each latitude; Steinschneider translated it without grasping its matter and thought the epistle on applications and the tract on the rising of the triplicities were parts of it; Suter rendered it "on the risings of the houses according to the four quadrants". ¹ Nallino says the title makes plain that it treated the subject of chapter 55 of the Zij and its spurious appendix — the computation of astrological directions — though it is unknown whether it offered a new solution more exact geometrically than Ptolemy's. ¹ He thinks the same problem must also have appeared in his commentary on the Tetrabiblos. ¹

Some took this book to be identical with the Epistle on Verifying the Quantities of Applications, reading Ibn al-Nadim as saying it was "known" by that name; Nallino rejects this on grounds of Arabic grammar, because Ibn al-Nadim was adding a further famous epistle after listing the books, and because the two problems are wholly different. ⁴