A comprehensive treatise or compendium, especially referring to Ptolemy's famous astronomical work 'Almagest,' which was the primary source for astronomy for over 1,400 years.
From Arabic 'al-majisti' (the greatest), which is how Islamic scholars referred to Ptolemy's 'Syntaxis Mathematica.' The Arabic honorific became the work's common name when it was rediscovered in Europe during the Renaissance.
Ptolemy's Almagest was so authoritative that for over 1,000 years, nearly everything Europeans believed about the cosmos came from this one book—until Copernicus dared to challenge it in the 1500s!
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