Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c11.8

c11.8

I shall now address some thing approaching to a proof of there having been telescopes, tho perhaps not like ours. First then, I asked a learned mussulman with whom I had frequent conversations on these subjects, whether they had any mention of such instruments as we use; he said he did not recollect that there were any, except Alhazan, amongst the Arabs, who (ever) that he knew had written on such subjects. Nor do I know added he, that he did describe such instruments, but he treats of the principles on which they depend.