A Savilian professor bribed an Ottoman soldier to steal Ptolemy’s Almagest.

Evidence

In 1643 John Greaves became the Savilian Professor of Astronomy. Greaves (1602–52), a fellow of Merton, was a mathematician and, like the man who endowed his chair, he was convinced that there was still a great deal of worthwhile scientific material to be found in classical and Oriental manuscripts. He was particularly interested in Arabic and Persian writers on astronomy and in 1638–9, encouraged by Laud, Greaves (who at that time was Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London) travelled to Italy, Istanbul and Egypt on a hunt for scientific manuscripts. In Istanbul, he suborned an Ottoman soldier to steal a beautiful copy of Ptolemy’s Almagest from the Sultan’s library and in Egypt he made careful measurements of the Great Pyramid. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 162

Categorization

• CANDY: A delicious story: a distinguished Oxford professor suborning an Ottoman soldier to steal a manuscript from the Sultan’s library.
• QUESTION: What became of the stolen Almagest copy — is it now in the Bodleian or elsewhere?