At the very beginning of the last millennium Ibn al-Haytham greatly contributed to the investigation of the Milky Way. Here, the only three currently known versions of his work on the location of the Milky Way are compared to each other and discussed. A comparison of the texts and an early translation into German by E. Wiedemann in 1906 reveals several differences that triggered a new critical translation of the passed down text. We give detailed comments on the work and check the validity of Ibn al-Haytham's arguments. We also discuss his work in the framework of the ‘Great Debate’ on the Milky Way that took place around 1920, more than a decade after Wiedemann's translation. We find that Ibn al-Haytham's work is certainly at the peak of the unaided-eye era of the Milky Way's discovery. Through his own argumentation and in comparison to Ptolemy's observations Ibn al-Haytham clearly identifies the Galaxy as an extraterrestrial body that is not part of the atmosphere but much further away than the Moon. With some of his statements on the stellar positions passed down by Ptolemy, Ibn al-Haytham also anticipates the concept of stellar proper motions.

中文翻译：

---

早期的大辩论：对伊本·海瑟姆关于银河系与地球的位置的工作的评论

上个千年伊本·海瑟姆对银河系的研究做出了巨大贡献。在这里，将他目前已知的关于银河系位置的著作的三个版本相互比较和讨论。将文本与 E. Wiedemann 在 1906 年早期翻译成德文的文本进行比较，揭示了一些差异，这些差异引发了对传下来的文本进行新的批判性翻译。我们对这项工作给出了详细的评论，并检查了 Ibn al-Haytham 论点的有效性。我们还讨论了他在 1920 年左右发生的银河系“大辩论”框架内的工作，这比 Wiedemann 的翻译晚了十多年。我们发现，Ibn al-Haytham 的工作无疑处于银河系发现的肉眼时代的顶峰。通过他自己的论证并与托勒密的观察结果进行比较，伊本·海瑟姆清楚地将银河系确定为一个不属于大气层但比月球更远的外星天体。伊本·海瑟姆（Ibn al-Haytham）在托勒密（Ptolemy）传下来的一些关于恒星位置的陈述中，也预见到了恒星自行的概念。