PREFACE

"He lives doubly who also enjoys the past." Len Scammell (1924-1997).

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 8th and 9th 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 9th to the 19th 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. I Colleagues concerned with Renaissance European instruments generally have no conception of this: for example, if a trigonometric grid appears on a 16th-century English astrolabe, they attribute the innovative influence to Apian in early-16th-century Germany rather than to a tradition that started with al-Khwarizml in 9th-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

I On my use of the term "medieval" in the context of Islamic science see p. x to vol. 1.

David A. King - 9789047406754 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:06:01AM via free access x PREFACE 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 ofIslamic 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 19th century and continued in Germany until in the early decades of the 20th • Major contributions included: .:. Jean-Jacques Sedillot (Pere), Traite des instruments astronomiques des Arabes compose au treizieme siecle par Aboul Hhassan Ali de Maroc ... , 2 vols., (Paris, 1834-1835), and Louis-Amelie Sedillot (jUs), "Memoire sur les instruments astronomiques des Arabes", (Paris, 1844), dealing with the monumental treatise on instrument construction and use by the late-13th-century scholar Abu 'All al-Marrakush1. 1* .:. 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 19th century, when various scholars published detailed descriptions of individual ones. Without wishing to ignore altogether various studies of the 17th and 18th centuries (now reprinted in Frankfurt-see above), mention should here be made of: .:. Frederic Sarrus, "Description d'un astrolabe construit a Maroc en l'an 1208" (Strasbourg, 1853) . •:. Franz Woepcke, "Uber ein in der k6niglichen 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 Constructedfor Shah Sultan Husain Safawi ... (London, 1856).

1* On interest in Islamic science in Paris in the 19th century see Charette, Orientalisme et histoire des sciences. 2 On Schoy and his work on Islamic science see Ruska, "Carl Schoy".

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.:. idem, "Description of an Arabic Quadrant" (London, 1860). Studies of this calibre in the 20th century were rare. I can think of only three: .:. Josef Frank and Max Meyerhof, "Ein Astrolab aus dem indischen Mogulreiche" (Heidelberg, 1925) . •:. OmelIa Marra, "Di due astrolabi ispano-moreschi conservati nel Museo di Capodimonte" (Naples, 1984) . •:. Gisela Helmecke, "Das Berliner Astrolab des Mu1;tammad Zaman al-Mashadl" (Berlin, 1985). Various attempts have been made, at different levels, to document the available sources. I mention: .:. Robert T. Gunther, The Astrolabes of the World (Oxford, 1932V .:. Leon A. Mayer, Islamic Astrolabists and Their Works (Geneva, 1956).4 .:. Derek 1. de Solla Price et al., A Computerized Checklist ofAstrolabes (New Haven, Ct., 1973).5 .:. Emilie Savage-Smith, Islamicate Celestial Globes-Their History, Construction, and Use (Washington, D.C., 1985) . •:. Alain Brieux and Francis Maddison, Repertoire des facteurs d 'astrolabes et de leurs a:uvres (to be published by C.N.R.S. in Paris, but in December, 2004, still not ready for printing). The study of Islamic instrumentation has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years, not least as a result of the fact that several hundred Islamic instruments have been catalogued in Frankfurt for the first time (see below) and numerous examples of particular sophistication or historical importance have been studied in detail. The subject has also been dealt with for the first time as a chapter in the history of Islamic astronomy in general and of astronomical timekeeping in Islamic civilization in particular. Also, we now study Islamic instruments in the light of the associated textual tradition, drawing on the hundreds of treatises in Arabic (and also Persian and, to lesser extent, Turkish) dealing with instrumentation that were compiled during the millennium of Muslim preoccupation with the topic. My first contribution to the subject was a collection of early studies reprinted in .:. Islamic Astronomical Instruments (London, 198711995). Whatever their failings, these studies at least had the virtue of considering instruments in the light of relevant texts. An overview that I prepared in 1991 appeared only in translation, and the original has been elaborated here (see X). This was: .:. "Strumentazione astronomica nel mondo medievale islamico" (Turin, 1991). The potential of Islamic and medieval European instruments as historical sources is described m:

3 On the context of Gunther's work in Oxford see Simcock, ed., Robert Gunther. 4 On the context of this remarkable work, one of a series in which Mayer also documented Islamic glassmakers (1955), architects (1956), woodcarvers (1958), metalworkers (1959), armourers (1962) and stonemasons (not published?), see Mayer Memorial Volume, pp. xi-xxvii, with an obituary and list of publications. 5 For Price's publications on instruments see the list in the preamble to XIIb.

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.:. "Astronomical Instruments between East and West" (Vienna, 1994). This was appropriately addressed to colleagues in Islamic, Byzantine and Medieval Studies. The theme of our gathering was "Realienkunde" in the Middle Ages, one word for "the study ofhistorical material objects" and something of an anathema to those many colleagues who believe that history is documented only in textual sources. In another study, I presented two remarkable 17th-century Safavid instruments that had recently come to light: .:. World-Mapsfor Finding the Direction and Distance to Mecca-Innovation and Tradition in Islamic Science (Leiden, 1999). I attempted to show first that they did not fit into what we knew about contemporaneous instrumentation in Iran, second that they could only be understood in the light of earlier Islamic scientific achievements, and third that they bore not a trace of European influence. (On the early inspiration for the mathematics underlying the grids on these maps, see now VIle. My claims about the Islamic inspiration behind certain European instruments, such the universal horary quadrant (quadrans vetus) and the universal horary dial (as on the navicula de Venetiis) are now documented more fully in XIla-b.) On three aspects of instruments, my investigations and descriptions are deficient. I refer first to two technological aspects of the objects: what they were made of, and how they were made. I never investigate the metallurgical composition of the instruments and seldom get involved with construction marks. Both topics are inadequately treated in the literature and alas no contribution to them is made here. Furthermore, I seldom get involved in detailed investigations of stellar positions indicated on instruments. For this we have a ground-breaking study: .:. Burkhard Stautz, Untersuchungen von mathematisch-astronomischen Darstellungen auf mittelalterlichen Instrumenten islamischer und europaischer Herkunft (Bassum (D), 1997). I occasionally refer to Stautz's findings. I have not developed the means to myself investigate graphically or numerically the star positions, as Stautz did using modem stellar data adjusted for the epoch of the instrument or its precursors or, where appropriate, medieval data from the manuscript sources. (Elly Dekker has criticized aspects of Stautz' methodology with regard to European astrolabes, and has published some more thorough investigations of a few instruments. ) There is a very real sense in which a supplement to the present volume has already been published. I refer to: .:. Fran<;ois Charette, Mathematical Instrumentation in Fourteenth-Century Egypt and Syria- The Illustrated Treatise ofNajm al-Dln al-Misrl (Leiden, 2003). This is a text edition with translation and detailed analysis of a 14th-century Egyptian treatise describing over a hundred instrument-types. Nothing like it has been published since Sedillot• pere produced his monumental translation of one-half of the treatise of al-Marrakushl (see above). I have not incorporated most of Charette's findings regarding different kinds of Islamic instruments, which often go far beyond my own, so the reader of this volume would do well to have Charette's work at hand. On the other hand, I have included a few illustrations from the Chester Beatty manuscript to encourage readers to acquire Charette's book on this most remarkable discovery. Likewise, two new studies by Fran<;ois Charette and Petra Schmidl take our knowledge of 9th _

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century astronomy in Baghdad a major step forward. Both include editions of texts never studied previously, with translations and informed commentary. I refer to: .:. "A Universal Plate for Timekeeping with the Stars by I:Iabash aI-HaBib: Text, Translation and Preliminary Commentary", Suhayl 2 (2001), pp. 107-159 . •:. "al-Khwarizml and Practical Astronomy in Ninth-Century Baghdad. The Earliest Extant Corpus of Texts in Arabic on the Astrolabe and Other Portable Instruments", SCIAMVS 5 (2004), pp. 101-198. There are many more such texts awaiting serious study. I shall assume that the reader has at hand vol. 1 of this work, entitled The Call of the Muezzin (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004). In that I presented various studies (I-IX) dealing with timekeeping by the sun and stars and the regulation of the astronomically-defined times of Muslim prayer. In this volume, I begin with an overview of Islamic instrumentation, presenting detailed bibliographical about all previous studies (X). Then I present a rather curious history of an astronomical formula that was widely used in mathematical astronomy and astronomical instrumentation for over a thousand years, but which was previously virtually undocumented (XI). There follow two studies of universal horary quadrants and universal horary dials (XIIa-b). Studies of individual instruments of particular historical interest are included to show how much can extracted from them when they are examined closely (XIII-XV). Another study shows how much can be extracted from a group of instruments, this time, geographical information, either explicitly or implicitly featured on them (XVI). Another shows the potential of astronomical instruments to contribute to the history of Islamic art (XVII). Finally, I include an ordered list of early Islamic instruments to ca. 1500 (XVIII), in the hope that others will be inspired to turn their attention to these rich historical sources. (Many other instruments dating from after ca. 1500 have been omitted, simply because I do not control them.) I actually never planned to publish this volume in this form. The studies now numbered X• XII were submitted to Brill in the Spring of 2003 along with I-IX, but it was found that the resulting book would be simply too large. It was decided to put I-IX in a first volume, already weighing 3 kg, and this was what was published under the title The Call of the Muezzin. This decision left X-XII for a rather small second volume. However, in the Spring of2003, during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I prepared a study (now XIIIb) of the oldest known astrolabe, formerly housed in the Archaeological Museum in Baghdad. To include XIIIb alone seemed unreasonable, so I rescued my descriptions (now XIIIc) of all early Eastern Islamic astrolabes from before ca. 1100, most of which were also made in Baghdad, from my unpublished catalogue of medieval Islamic and European instruments. Furthermore, during my sabbatical leave in the winter of 2003-04, and since various recent publications on astrolabes of particular historical importance were not easily accessible, I prepared XIIId-e and XIV-XVIII for inclusion as well. I rather wish that I could have spent my sabbatical enlarging X into a real overview of Islamic instrumentation, but I found concentration hard after listening every morning to the news from Iraq and elsewhere. I could have gone on rehashing old materials or plundering my unfinished instrument catalogue, but then, in Marrakesh in March, 2004, I was inspired by the words of my friend and travelling-companion Henry Spalding Schley III (Pensees inedites): "To advance, sometimes one has to stop." The reader must appreciate that these instruments are scattered in museums and private

David A. King - 9789047406754 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:06:01AM via free access XIV PREFACE collections all over the world, and the difficulties of conducting serious research on them will then be obvious. My research over the past couple of decades has been greatly facilitated by the generosity of certain major museums6 and certain individual collectors. It is a pleasure to single out for special mention such splendid institutions as the Museum ofthe History of Science, Oxford; the Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence; the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; the Adler Planetarium, Chicago, Ill.; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; The British Museum, London; the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; the Museo Arqueol6gico Nacional, Madrid; and, last, but by no means least, three small but very important collections: the Benaki Museum, Athens; the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, and the Davids Samling, Copenhagen. Few museums have had the foresight to provide me with photographs free of charge. One that has is the Benaki Museum in Athens, and this I single out here for special mention and thanks. For the provision of photos I am grateful to all the institutions mentioned above and more besides, and especially to Jeremy Collins, formerly of Christie's, South Kensington, and Jacques van Damme of Brussels. A special word of thanks is due to Dominique Brieux for giving me all the photos left over from the project associated with the Repertoire. The richest collections also merit my gratitude for unlimited access to their instruments: the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, and the Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence. Other museums, where I was only allowed to inspect one instrument at a time, or where I was forbidden to work on the instruments at all, are better not named here. However, where there is a will, there is a way, and some the illustrations presented here stem from such collections as these. Some subtle hints can be found between the lines of the main text, and a careful examination of the credits will reveal that photos from some of these uncooperative museums have come my way from the most surprising quarters. On the other hand, it should be mentioned that many museums are incapable of preparing decent photos of instruments. In the meantime, however, technological advances have made the acquisition of large quantities of photos something of an exercise in folly. In the past few years my long-term project to prepare descriptions of all medieval Islamic and European instruments has progressed, and much that is new here is the result of the privilege of being able to inspect large numbers of instruments. That this project could get off the ground at all is due to the generosity of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) in Bonn, which provided funding during 1992-96 (Islamic instruments) and 1998-2001 (European instruments). Much of the progress that was made in the early years was thanks to the participation of Kurt Maier (see the preamble to XVIII). It will still be a few years before any of this material gathered can be published, although a sample is included here (XIIIc), as well as a partial table of contents of the potential catalogue (XVIII). Certainly, besides the need for further funding, one of the greatest problems has been the acquisition of adequate photographs of instruments. During the course of my research, technology has advanced so rapidly that it has left me behind. I am left with hundreds of black and white photos, many of inferior quality, and have yet to request from a single museum that they prepare digitalized images of any instrument. The illustrations presented here are from "old-style" black and white photos. I had to purchase a scanner and a new computer

6 These are listed here more or less in order of their importance for the study of Islamic instrumentation.

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to make copies for Brill. For years I have been working with computers that were constantly on the blink. 7 To my wife, Patricia, my appreciation for her companionship in many ventures over close to 35 years and her encouragement in this encounter with astronomical instruments, as well as her tolerance vis-a-vis yet another book that I had sort of promised I would not write. I am very grateful to the Hessisches Ministerium fUr Wissenschaft und Kunst for sabbatical leave during the Winter Semester 2003-04. This enabled me to prepare this volume for publication in a very quiet place. My debt to the various scholars to whom the various parts of this volume are dedicated will be obvious to all who know their works. I mention here, in addition, two friends and colleagues who have devoted their lives to the history of instrumentation, namely, Anthony 1. Turner and Gerard L'E. Turner. It has been my pleasure and privilege to collaborate with both of them over many years, and to profit from their expertise. My gratitude is also extended to all those members of my weekly instrument seminar in Frankfurt, with whom I have shared much of the material in this book at some stage or another: budding specialists in the history ofIslamic science, Arabists and Islamicists, medievalists, general historians, archaeologists; high-school teachers of Mathematics or Physics; retired pharmacists, engineers, professors of Mathematics, and Lufthansa pilots; and even, on occasion, a few undergraduate students. All of them have contributed insights of one sort or another. Sven Ruhberg, in particular, has saved me on several occasions from blunders relating to technical matters. To Ryszard Dyga and Wolf-Dieter Wagner of the Frankfurt Institute and other nudama' who cannot be named here, I extend my thanks for their willingness to get hold of materials and send them on to me in distant regions. Petra Schmidl valiantly corrected countless editions of the Arabic texts and achieved their final form. W olf-Dieter Wagner kindly provided me with usable text from the originals of XIIIe and XIVa, most of which he had to retype. Once again, Brill has done me proud, thanks to the labours of Trudy Kamperveen, Tanja Cowall, and-last but by no means least-Ciska Palm of Palm Produkties. As Fran90is Charette and several ofmy colleagues and students well know, the study ofhistorical instruments is exciting but also contagious, and it is my hope that the present volume will generate further interest not only in Islamic instruments, but also in their medieval and Renaissance European counterparts. This volume is far from being the last word on Islamic instruments, and there is even more to be done on the European tradition. 8 In any case, I hope to have succeeded in demonstrating the importance of these splendid objects for furthering our understanding of both the history of astronomy and material culture in the Islamic world.

7 Several colleagues with a sense of humour have much appreciated my previous accounts of problems with computers. These are in my Mecca-Centred World-Maps, p. xxi, The Ciphers o{the Monks, p. 19, and the Preface to vol. 1, pp. xii-xiii. This time around I have less to report than before, save that when I returned to Frankfurt in April, 2004, from my sabbatical in France, my Frankfurt iMac crashed altogether with the latest version of this book. It would not even open. My French Mac wizard, Patrick Alison, told me over the phone that every time I open the computer I should hold down four keys simultaneously: • + option + P + R. (I wonder how many people on this planet know this!) I should continue using this procedure until my next visit to France in July, 2004, when he could repair it, and by which time the text should be with Brill. 8 Anyone who would dispute this should look at the illustrations of Islamic instruments by Mu:;;tara $idqI (see n. 13 to v-tO), and the illustrations of European instruments by Georg Hartmann (see XIIh-tO). Neither the Cairo and Weimar manuscripts in which these occur have been published. The present volume, together with the first volume, contains just a few of these illustrations.

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