Book Review: Roshdi Rashed (2025). L’optique dans l’Inde islamique au XVIIe siècle: Ibn Ṣāliḥ, Sur les miroirs ardents paraboliques

Professor Roshdi Rashed, emeritus professor at the University of Paris, is a distinguished scholar in the history of mathematics during the Islamic period. For decades, he has produced a vast body of work—ranging from research articles to critical editions and French translations of Arabic scientific texts—on the history of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. Much of his scholarship has focused on early Islamic figures such as Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Sahl, and Thabit ibn Qurra, among others. In recent years, however, Rashed has expanded his scope to include mathematicians of the later Islamic period. This shift is significant, especially in light of the dominant—but flawed—narrative of scientific decline in the Islamic world after the seventh century AH. Despite the growing body of research on later scholars such as Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, Ghīyāth al-Dīn al-Kāshānī, and Shams al-Dīn al-Khafrī, the notion of decline remains widespread. Yet this narrative is both historically inaccurate and reductive, failing to account for the richness and continuity of scientific inquiry during this time. Historians of science have long recognized the intellectual vitality of the period spanning the seventh to the thirteenth centuries AH. During this era, Islamic civilization was shaped by three major dynasties: the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal. Each produced notable mathematicians, including Muḥammad Bāqir Yazdī in Safavid Iran, Mirim Çelebi in the Ottoman Empire, and ʿAbd al-Raḥim ibn Ṣāliḥ in Mughal India. In his recent book, The Science of Landscapes in Seventeenth-Century AD Islamic India, Rashed offers a critical edition, commentary, and French translation of a treatise on burning mirrors and parabolic geometry by Ibn Ṣāliḥ. This work exemplifies the sophistication of scientific thought in the later Islamic period and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of its intellectual legacy.