Download PDF | David A. King - In Synchrony with the Heavens_ Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, Brill 2005.
1143 Pages
PREFACE
We looked for instruments of mass calculation in Iraq and surrounding regions and we found a mountain of evidence proving that the astronomical instrumentation that concerns us here started right there in Iraq in the 8 th and 9 th centuries. From there, it spread to all corners of the Islamic world where serious astronomy was practiced. We can document a thousand years of Muslim activity in this field, none of which ever did anybody any harm.
In this book, I present materials for the history of astronomical instruments. It is well known that Greek astronomy was concerned with instruments for observation and for calculation, and that Europeans before the invention of the telescope were involved with the same kind of instruments. This missing chapter deals with instrumentation in the Islamic world during the period from the 9 th to the 19 th century. I wish I could have written a history of this activity, but I could not. If I had actually planned to publish this book, which I did not (see below), there are many topics that I would have wanted to include but that I have dealt with here only in passing. The reader will at least find extensive bibliographical references to treatments of such topics in other publications.
My purpose in this volume is not only to portray the richness and variety of Islamic instrumentation, but also to present some examples of European instruments previously considered to be European inventions but which we now know had Islamic precedents. It is well known to specialists that medieval European instrumentation was highly indebted to the Islamic tradition. What only recent research has shown is that, in addition, virtually all innovations in instrumentation in Europe up to ca. 1550 were either directly or indirectly Islamic in origin or had been conceived previously by some Muslim astronomer somewhere. (This does not, of course, exclude the possibility of independent development.) Thereafter European science and instrumentation took off in directions undreamed of in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, whereas in Islamic civilization a science that was essentially still medieval continued to be practiced and was generally deemed adequate for the needs of the society. 1
Colleagues concerned with Renaissance European instruments generally have no conception of this: for example, if a trigonometric grid appears on a 16 th -century English astrolabe, they attribute the innovative influence to Apian in early-16 th -century Germany rather than to a tradition that started with al-Khwarizml in 9 th -century Baghdad, thence to al-Andalus, thence via Latin translations to medieval Europe. I do not expect my findings to have much effect on Euro-centric science history. Besides, numerous problems result from the fact that our understanding of the transmission of ideas relating to instrumentation and actual instruments is still extremely limited. But at least colleagues may now be encouraged to enquire whether this or that Renaissance innovation is indeed original. In many cases, we cannot rule out independent initiative anyway.
Recently some 12 volumes of reprints of early studies of Islamic instruments were published in Frankfurt, a monumental total of over 5,000 pages. So the subject is not new, but its scope has not been generally appreciated. Historians of mathematical astronomy have tended to scorn astronomical instruments, not least because they have not cared for those of their colleagues who were impassioned by instruments. Their loss! Historians of Islamic art may never discover that the largest single corpus of signed and dated metalwork comprises astronomical instruments. L. A. Mayer’s valiant efforts to document astrolabists alongside other craftsmen (see below) have alas been wasted on our art-historian colleagues. In September, 2004, a conference entitled “Metals and Metalworking in Islamic Iran” was held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. Scholars talked about pen-boxes and door-knockers and unfinished trays, but not about astrolabes. Since Iranian astrolabes are often more beautiful and more intricately worked than other metal objects, and not least because most of them are signed and dated, it is a disaster for the history of Islamic metalwork that they have suffered such neglect.
The study of Islamic instrumentation based on textual sources began in France in the 19 th century and continued in Germany until in the early decades of the 20 th . Major contributions included:
♦Jean-Jacques Sedillot (pere ), Traite des instruments astronomiques des Arabes compose au treizieme sieclepar Aboul Hhassan Ali de Maroc ... , 2 vols., (Paris, 1834-1835), and Louis-Amelie Sedillot (fils), “Memoire sur les instruments astronomiques des Arabes”, (Paris, 1844), dealing with the monumental treatise on instrument construction and use by the late-13 th -century scholar Abu ‘All al-Marrakushl.
❖ Joseph Frank, Zur Geschichte des Astrolabs, (Erlangen, 1920), on the history of non¬ standard astrolabes.
♦ Karl Schoy, Gnomonik der Araber, (Berlin & Leipzig, 1923), on sundial theory. 2
The study of actual instruments began in earnest also in the 19 th century, when various scholars published detailed descriptions of individual ones. Without wishing to ignore altogether various studies of the 17 th and 18 th centuries (now reprinted in Frankfurt—see above), mention should here be made of:
❖ Frederic Sarrus, “Description d’un astrolabe construit a Maroc en Fan 1208” (Strasbourg, 1853).
❖ Franz Woepcke, “Uber ein in der koniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin befindliches arabisches Astrolabium” (Berlin, 1855).
♦ Bernhard Dorn, “Drei in der Kaiserlichen Offentlichen Bibliothek zu St. Petersburg befindliche astronomische Instrumente mit arabischen Inschriften” (St. Petersburg, 1865).
♦ William H. Morley, Description of a Planispheric Astrolabe Constructed for Shah Sultan Husain Safawl... (London, 1856).
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