ALBATEGNIUS (MOHAMMED BEN GEBIR AL BATANI, COM monly called ALBATEGNICES) (C. 850-929), an Arab prince and astronomer, was born at Batan in Mesopotamia. From his obser vations at Aracte and Damascus, where he died, he was able to cor rect some of Ptolemy's results, previously taken on trust. He compiled new tables of the sun and moon, long accepted as authoritative, discovered the movement of the sun's apogee, and assigned to annual precession the improNred value of 55". Perhaps independently of Aryabhatta (born at Pataliputra on the Ganges A.D. 476), he introduced the use of sines in calcu lation, and partially that of tangents. His principal work, De Motu Stellaruni, was published at Nuremberg in 1537 by Mel anchthon, in a blundering Latin translation by Plato Tiburtinus (c. 1116), annotated by Regiomontanus. A reprint appeared at Bologna in 1645. The original manuscript is preserved at the Vatican; and the Escorial library possesses in manuvript a treatise of some value by him on astronomical chronology.
See Houzeau, Bibliographie-astronomique, i. 467; M. Marie, Histoire des sciences, ii. 113; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomze, p. 67; Delambre, Hist. de l'astr. au moyen age, ch. h.; Phil. Trans., 1693 (c9), where E. Halley supplies corrections to some of the observations recorded in De Motu Stellarum.