Al-Sufi

Abu al-Husayn Abd al-Rahman ibn Umar al-Sufi al-Razi (903-986 CE), known in Latin Europe as Azophi, was a Persian astronomer remembered above all for his Book of the Images of the Fixed Stars (Kitab Suwar al-Kawakib), completed around 964. He worked under the patronage of the Buyid ruler Adud al-Dawla, a dynasty of Shia emirs who then dominated western Iran and Iraq; sources describe the emir as both al-Sufi's patron and his pupil. The term al-Sufi here is a family name and should not be confused with Sufism, the Islamic mystical tradition.

His major work was a careful revision of the star catalogue in Ptolemy's Almagest, the great second-century Greek astronomical handbook. Al-Sufi re-checked each constellation, corrected stellar positions, magnitudes and colours, and matched the Greek figures against the indigenous Arabic star names, many of which (in altered form) survive in modern usage. The book is also celebrated for what is generally held to be the earliest surviving written description of the Andromeda nebula, which he called a "little cloud."

He was born in Rayy (near modern Tehran) and is reported to have lived and worked at Rayy, Isfahan and Shiraz, dying around 986; several sources place his death in Shiraz, though this is given as probable rather than certain. Beyond his court service and his books, little of his personal life is securely documented, and his itinerary between cities is not finely datable in the surviving record.