From al-Andalus to Khurasan

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The Astrolabe

An ancient instrument for solving problems of location and distance, as well as time

Astrolábon órganon is the word used in Ptolemaeus Syntaxis 5.1 to describe a form of armillary sphere consisting of both fixed and rotating rings for determining the ecliptic co-ordinates of stars. Also called astrolabe were two-dimensional representations of the celestial sphere: over fixed disks with a representation of the horizon of the earth (in each case for a specific geographic latitude) and its parallels up to the zenith lies a rotating representation of the heavens (called ‘spider’ or ‘net’) with zodiac and indicators for some of the brightest stars. On the back is an indicator (‘alidade’) with visor plates for calculating the height of the stars. The astrolabe allows its user to determine the hours of day and night, the positions of stars, and the height and depth of objects on earth (mountains, buildings, wells). The oldest extant descriptions of the flat, planispheric astrolabe come from Iohannes Philoponus, 6th century AD, and (in Syrian) from Severus Sebokht, c. 660 AD. Indirect references may date back as early as Theon (4th cent.). Between the 8th and the 9th centuries the Arabs appropriated the knowledge of the astrolabe. At the end of the 10th century and again in the 12th century, they passed it on to Western Europe, where astrolabes were constructed up until the 17th cent. Today, one Byzantine astrolabe (from 1062) is extant, as are some 750 Arabic-Islamic astrolabes and approximately the same number of European astrolabes.

This information is abstracted from Brill's New Pauly, the English edition of the authoritative Der Neue Pauly, Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. The encyclopaedic coverage and high academic standard of the work, the interdisciplinary and contemporary approach and clear and accessible presentation have made the New Pauly the unrivalled modern reference work for the ancient world. For more information see www.brillsnewpauly.com or visit our website catalog: www.brill.nl/bnp
Brill’s New Pauly and the complete original Der Neue Pauly, the recognized standard reference works for students and scholars of the ancient world are also available online. This dual-language edition offers basic and advanced search facilities and is fully browsable. New English translations are added as they become available. See www.paulyonline.brill.nl for more information and a demo version.

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Publications & Services> Advanced Search> From al-Andalus to Khurasan

From al-Andalus to Khurasan

Documents from the Medieval Muslim World

Edited by Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Lennart Sundelin, Sofía Torallas Tovar and Amalia Zomeño

Books

Available
Publication year: 2006


Series:	Islamic History and Civilization, 66
ISBN-13 (i)The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) has been changed from 10 to 13 digits on 1 January 2007:	978 90 04 15567 1
ISBN-10:	90 04 15567 8

Cover:	Hardback
Number of pages:	xxviii, 252 pp.

List price:	€ 100.00 / US$ 148.00

Readership

All those interested in Egypt, al-Andalus, Mediterranean medieval history, papyrology, epigraphy, archaeology, Late Antiquity, Byzantine history, early Islamic history, Islamic law, Greek, Coptic, the early development of Arabic language and literature and contact linguistics.

About the author(s)

Petra M. Sijpesteijn, who holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern studies from Princeton University (2004), is currently a Junior Research Fellow in Oriental Studies at Christ Church, Oxford. Her forthcoming book is entitled The Formation of a Muslim State: The World of an Early Muslim Egyptian Administrator.
Lennart Sundelin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is currently teaching in the Department of History at Miami University.
Sofía Torallas Tovar gained her Ph.D. in classical philology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She is currently a permanent research fellow at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid and is also the curator of the papyrus collection of the Abbey of Montserrat.
Amalia Zomeño is a research fellow at the Escuela de Estudios Árabes in Granada. She holds a Ph.D. in Arabic philology from Barcelona University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University (1998-2000). The main topic of her research is Islamic law.

As in many areas of pre-modern history, the study of medieval Islamic history has been critically hindered by the lack of available evidence. Unlike many parallel fields, however, the shortage of contemporary documentary evidence for medieval Islam has less to do with the survival of documents and archives as with their accessibility.
A rich documentary legacy survives, but because of its inaccessibility and unfamiliarity to all but the most specialised scholars in the field, it has remained sadly underutilised. This volume contributes to the redressing of that problem. It collects papers given at the conference 'Documents and the History of the Early Islamic Mediterranean World,' including editions of unpublished documents and historical studies, which make use of documentary evidence from al-Andalus, Sicily, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria and Khurasan.

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