Which Islamic-astronomy theorem named for al-Urdi appears in Copernican models?

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The Islamic-astronomy theorem named for al-Urdi that appears in Copernican models is the Urdi lemma.

Mu’ayyad al-Din al-Urdi was a 13th-century astronomer and mathematician who worked at the Maragheh observatory in Ilkhanid Iran. His lemma is a geometric result used to construct planetary models in which a small circle’s center can move while preserving the apparent direction of a planet. This helped astronomers reproduce planetary motion without accepting every feature of Ptolemy’s system.

The result became part of the mathematical toolkit associated with the Maragheh school. Later historians have identified the Urdi lemma, together with devices such as the Tusi couple, as an important precedent for some constructions in Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus. That does not mean Copernicus simply copied a complete heliocentric system; rather, similar mathematical techniques traveled through Arabic and Byzantine scholarly traditions.

The other options are general classical theorems, not the named medieval astronomical construction. The Urdi lemma is also sometimes discussed alongside the so-called Islamic or Maragheh-school contributions to pre-Copernican astronomy.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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