Alfonsine

The tables have been published by Rico y Sinobas (1866), in the same volume as his version of the Libro de las tablas alfonsies, and he claimed that they were "numerical fragments" of the original Alfonsine Tables.

The oriental observers gave the method of determining the rising of the star, of taking the altitude of the sun, and of drawing the meridian line: they enabled the student to solve all the practical problems of astronomy. In the intellectual genealogy of man they may claim to be the progenitors of Kepler and of Newton; and the calculations of the Alfonsines are the remote but efficient causes of the perfection of modern astronomy.

The General estoria says notable things about Seth and his descendents:^([sic]) not least, it tells us that these men were the first to have knowledge of the liberal arts, eminently of astrology. This bit of information comes to the work from Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews; the Alfonsines do scarcely more than expand Josephus’ astrology to cover all seven liberal arts and theology.

Instead, Ptolemy invoked a ninth sphere to provide the diurnal east-to-west motion and taught that the eighth sphere turned from west to east very slowly about the poles of the ecliptic, completing a full revolution in 36,000 years. However, Clavius relates, Albategnius (al-Battānī) found a different rate, namely, one revolution in 23,760 years and the Alfonsines still another, one revolution in 49,000 years.