Islamic planispheric astrolabe
Astrolabio planisférico perfeccionado
- Date
- c. 900 · confidence medium
- Place
- Baghdad, Iraq (al-Fazari, al-Khwarizmi)
- Credited to
- al-Fazari, al-Khwarizmi, al-Sufi, al-Zarqali (Toledo)
- People
- 👤 al-Fazārī?–1654
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A brass instrument that projects the celestial sphere onto a plane to measure altitudes and solve problems of time, latitude and the direction of Mecca. The Arabs turned it into a universal analogue calculator.
The universal astrolabe (safiha) of al-Zarqali in Toledo (c. 1050) removed the dependence on latitude.
What it led to
- the determination of prayer times and the qibla across the Islamic world
- observational astronomy and the astronomical tables (zij) of Toledo and Maragheh
- its arrival in Europe via al-Andalus (Gerbert of Aurillac, c. 980) and the mariner's astrolabe
Built on
- Early planispheric astrolabec. 150 CE
- Islamic astronomy and the Zij tablesc. 830
- Trigonometry as a disciplinec. 980
- Greek astrolabe (Hipparchus, Theon)
- Trigonometry as a discipline