453 



SHAMOUL. 



SHARP, GRANVILLE. 



456 



was provided for amply, lj the clear and undeniable operation of the 

 English law. 



SHAMOU'L, or SAMOU'L, called by Abul Faraj (' Hist. Dynast.,' 

 p. 408) Samoul Ben Yehouda al-Magrebbi al-Andalousi; by Ibn 

 Abi Osaibia (Oioun al-Ambii fi Tabaca'tal-Atebba", ' Fontes llelatiouuni 

 de Classibus Medicorum,' cap. xi., 18) Samoul Beu Yahia Ben 

 Abba's al-Magrebf; and by the anonymous author of the 'Arab. 

 Philosoph. Biblioth.' (quoted by Casiri, ' Biblioth. Arabico-Hiap. 

 Escur.' torn, i, p. 440) Shamoul Ben Yehoudd al-Andalousi, an 

 eminent Jewish physician, who (as his name implies) was born in 

 Spain, and was descended from an African family. He came with 

 his father (who was also a great philosopher) to Azerbijitn, and 

 settled himself at Man'igha, a place afterwards famous in oriental 

 geography for the observatory of the celebrated astronomer Nasi- 

 reddin (born A.H. 598, A.D. 1200 ; died A.H. 673, A,D. 1273). He 

 particularly studied astronomy, geometry, mathematics, and medicine, 

 and wrote several works on those sciences, of which one exists in MS. 

 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Uii, ' Catal.' p. 209 ; Nicoll and 

 Pusey, ' Catal,' p. 603). He was for some time attached to the service 

 of the Pehlewanides, an Atabek dynasty of Azerbijitn, founded by 

 II d>ghii! about the middle of the 6th century after the Hejra, or the 

 twelfth of our era (see De Guignes, ' Hist, des Huns/ &c., liv. 13, 

 torn. ii. p. 247). He embraced the religion of Mohammed, and wrote 

 a work against the Jews, in which he accused them of having inter- 

 polated the Mosaic Scriptures. His children belonged also to the 

 medical profession. He died at an advanced age at Maragha, accord- 

 ing to Abul Faraj and the anonymous author quoted above, about 

 A.H. 570 (A.D. 1174-5) ; according to HajjiKhalfa (and more probably), 

 A.H. 598 (A.D. 1201-2). 



SIIANFARAH, an Arabian poet, who lived before Mohammed. 

 He was a very swift runner, and his name became proverbial in 

 Arabia. Having sworn vengeance against the family of another Arab 

 called Salman, he surprised and killed many of its members, but was 

 at last taken himself and put to death. A beautiful poem of Shanfarah 

 is extant, which is entitled ' Lamiyatu-1-arab.' It has been translated 

 by De Sacy, and published in his ' Chrestomathie Arabe ' (Paris, 

 106), with excellent remarks. It is one of the oldest poems extant 

 in Arabic. Lamiyat means any poem rhyming in the letter lam; 

 and it was called Lamiyat of the Arab, to distinguish it from a later 

 poem by Toghrai, a Persian poet who wrote another poem, which bears 

 the title ' Lamiyatu-1-ajem,' or that of the Persian. 



SHARP, ABRAHAM, an ingenious mechanist and a laborious 

 calculator, was born at Little Horton, near Bradford in Yorkshire, in 

 1651. After having received the best education which a country 

 school afforded, he was placed as an apprentice with a merchant or 

 tradesman at Manchester ; but feeling little inclination for commerce, 

 and being strongly disposed to scientific pursuits, he prevailed on his 

 master to cancel his indentures before the term of his service was 

 expired. He then established himself at Liverpool, and there, while 

 in order to obtain the means of subsistence he kept a school for the 

 instruction of persons in humble life, he applied himself to the study 

 of mathematics, particularly of astronomy, and to the formation of 

 instruments for purposes connected with the sciences. It is probable 

 that the school was soon given up, for Ramsden, the celebrated 

 optician, who was his grand-nephew, relates that in his youth he held 

 the post of an exciseman, and that he quitted that employment on 

 obtaining possession of a small patrimonial estate. 



Being thus enabled to consult his own taste in, the choice of an 

 occupation, Sharp came to London, where he at first hired himself 

 as a book-keeper to a merchant ; but, having procured an introduction 

 to Flamsteed, this astronomer engaged him, in August, 1688, in 

 mounting the instruments which had been provided for the Royal 

 Observatory at Greenwich. He afterwards constructed and graduated 

 for the observatory a mural sector whose radius was six feet seven 

 inches and a half, and whose arc contained 140 degrees : the degrees 

 were subdivided by means of diagonal lines, according to the method 

 in use at that time, and by a micrometer screw ; and Flamsteed 

 states, in the prolegomena to his ' Historia Cselestis,' that the zenith 

 point was determined by observing the zenith distances of stars with 

 the instrument in direct and in reversed positions : in order to 

 accomplish the reversion, it was made capable of being placed 

 alternately on the eastern and on the western side of the wall. Sharp 

 also assisted his friend in observing the right-ascensions and declina- 

 tions of the sun, moon, and planets, and in forming the famous cata- 

 logue (the British) of 2884 fixed stars. 



Finding that frequent exposure to the cold air by night injured his 

 health, he resigned his post at the Royal Observatory, and retired to 

 his native town, where on his recovery, he fitted up an observatory for 

 himself, for which, with his own hands, he formed the lenses of the 

 telescopes and graduated the arcs of the instruments for measuring 

 angles. Sharp is considered by Srneaton as the first who brought 

 hand -graduation far on the way to perfection; the art was subse- 

 quently improved by Smeaton and Bird, but it has since been super- 

 seded by the use of dividing-engines, the invention of which is due to 

 Ramsden. 



It is however as an accurate calculator that Sharp is particularly 

 distinguished : after his retirement to Horton he continued to assist 

 Flamsteed in his labours, and he computed for him most of the tables 



in the second volume of the ' Historia Caelestis ;' he was also employed 

 frequently in making intricate calculations for Sir Jonas Moore, Dr. 

 Halley, and other mathematicians. In 1717 he published a treatise in 

 4to entitled ' Geometry Improved,' which contains an extensive and 

 accurate table of circular segments, with an accouut of its use in the 

 solution of problems ; also a table of the logarithms of numbers from 

 1 to 100, and of the prime numbers to 1100 (all computed to the 

 extent of sixty-one decimal places), together with subsidiary tables to 

 be used in forming from them the logarithms of other numbers. The 

 process of computing logarithms was then far more laborious than it 

 would be now, the formulae by which the operations may be greatly 

 facilitated not having been discovered ; and it is worthy of remark that 

 those formulae were not known till after the labour which they would 

 have spared had been undergone. Their utility for the purposes of 

 computation consists therefore chiefly in their being the means by 

 which the numbers given in the earliest tables may easily be verified. 



Mr. Sharp calculated, besides, a table of natural and logarithmic 

 sines, tangents, and secants to every second in the first minute of a 

 degree; and he determined to seventy-four places of decimals the 

 length of the circumference of a circle by means of -the series expressing 

 that of an arc in terma of its tangent, which had been discovered by 

 James Gregory in 1671. The series, when the arc =. 30 U , gives (after 

 being multiplied by 6) for the length of the half-circumference, when 

 the semidiameter ia equal to unity, 



and in this state it was employed by Mr. Sharp, who underwent the 

 immense labour of computing the values, and taking the sum of 150 

 of the terms within the braces, besides that of extracting the square 

 root of 3 to 76 decimal places. 



The health of this ingenious man had always been delicate ; and 

 after he quitted London he lived in a very retired manner, receiving 

 only the occasional visits of two friends from Bradford; even his 

 servant had seldom access to him, and the food for his meals was 

 placed, through a hole in the wall, in a closet adjoining his study. It 

 is stated that often during a whole day, when deeply engaged in calcu- 

 lations, he took no refreshment; yet he found time to keep up an 

 extensive correspondence with the great mathematicians of that age, 

 and he regularly attended the services of religion at a chapel for 

 dissenters in the town. He was never married, and he died July 18, 

 1742, at the age of ninety-one years. 



SHARP, GRANVILLE, was the son of Dr. Thomas Sharp, who held 

 a prebend in Durham cathedral, and was archdeacon of Northumber- 

 land. Dr. Thomas Sharp was the author of several works, philological, 

 antiquarian, and religious, which were collected and published in 6 

 vols. 8vo, London, 1763. He was born about 1693, and died in 1758. 



Granville Sharp was born in 1734. He was educated for the bar, 

 but he never practised, and quitted the study of the law for a situation 

 in the Ordnance-office, which however he resigned on the breaking out 

 of the American war, being opposed to those principles and measures 

 of the British government which led to that war. He then took 

 chambers in the Temple, with the intention of pursuing his studies as 

 a private gentleman. 



Granville Sharp, though a man of considerable literary acquirements, 

 and the author of several works in philology, law, theology, and politics, 

 is chiefly known for the boldness, the ability, and the effect with which 

 he stood forward as the opponent of negro slavery. In 1769 he pub- 

 lished ' A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of 

 Tolerating Slavery in England, with Remarks on the Opinions given 

 in 1729 by the then Attorney- and Solicitor- General,' 8vo, London, 

 with an Appendix, 1772. His conduct however in a case of individual 

 oppression first brought him conspicuously before the public. A negro 

 of the name of Somerset had been brought to London, and, falling ill, 

 was turned out of doors by his master. Sharp found him in the street 

 in a state of the utmost destitution, and took him to St. Bartholomew's 

 Hospital, where he was restored to health, and Sharp then procured 

 him a .situation as a servant. About two years afterwards Somerset 

 was arrested by his old master, and imprisoned in the Poultry Compter 

 as a runaway slave. Somerset applied to his former friend Sharp, who 

 brought the case before the lord mayor, by whom it was decided that 

 Somerset should be set at liberty. The master however, in defiance 

 of this decision, seized Somerset in the presence of the lord mayor 

 and of Sharp, and insisted upon his right to his slave. Sharp then 

 brought an action against the master for assault ; the case was tried, 

 and was finally referred as a question of law to the twelve judges; it 

 was argued at three sittings, in January, in February, and in May 

 1772, and by an unanimous decision the law of England was declared 

 to be that as soon as a slave sets foot on English territory he becomes 

 free. 



Sharp continued to exert himself in behalf of the negroes. He wrote 

 four pamphlets against slavery in 1776. At length the Association for 

 the Abolition of Negro Slavery was formed, the first meeting of which 

 was held in London on the 22nd of May 1787, when Granville Sharp 

 was appointed chairman of the twelve persons of whom it consisted, 

 most of whom were London merchants, and all but two were Quakers. 

 In this great causa Sharp continued to labour, as well as in others 

 favourable to popular rights and political freedom. He was opposed 



