a review of quṭb al-dīn shīrāzī’s persian translation of eclid’s elements

the elements of euclid, sometimes knows as the “the book of euclid”, and in the mathematical texts of the islamic period often referred to as “the book of the elements”, is one of the main sources of islamic mathematics. this paper addresses the history of the translation of this book and its recension by naṣīr al-dīn ṭūsī. then, through a comparison of the first chapter of the fourth part of quṭb al-dīn shīrāzī’s durrat al-tāj with the arabic translation of isḥāq ibn ḥunayn and the recension of ṭūsī, it is shown that the text of shīrāzī is in fact a persian translation of ṭūsī’s recension of the elements, despite the existence of some differences between the two texts. one of these differences, which is analyzed in the last part of this paper, is a single figure produced by shīrāzī and containing all the 48 propositions of the first book of the elements.