A Brief History of Observatories in the Islamic World (800-1600)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21111/injas.v3i1.13839Keywords:
Islamic observatories, ʿilm, al-Ma’mun, astronomy, cosmology, āyāt, Islamic civilisation, metaphysics, science and spirituality, historical philosophyAbstract
This paper examines the historical and philosophical role of observatories in the Islamic world (800–1600 CE). More than scientific centres, these institutions embodied Islam’s metaphysical commitment to knowledge (ʿilm) and cosmic order. Under leaders like Caliph al-Ma’mun, observatories became state-sponsored platforms for studying celestial bodies not only as physical objects but as divine signs (āyāt). Using classical sources and modern scholarship, the study situates these observatories within Islam’s unified worldview, where science and spirituality were intertwined. It argues that Islamic scientific progress must be understood within its civilisational and theological framework.References
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Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Need for a Sacred Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 14–18.
Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1995), 147.
George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 34–38; Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Harvard University Press, 1992), 98
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Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 330–335; Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam, 122
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