House arrest and work on the Book of Optics
· Cairo, Egypt
Wikimedia Commons · Public domain; Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0 · file A later biographical tradition places Ibn al-Haytham under house arrest in Cairo from 1011 to 1021. It associates this confinement with his composition of the Book of Optics; the episode should be treated cautiously because medieval accounts of his life differ in detail. The exact site of confinement is not securely identified; coordinates represent central historic Cairo. The account is based on later biographical tradition.
