Abstract
This chapter addresses the cross references, the travel back and forth of ideas, innovations and traditions generated at both sides of the Islamic Mediterranean Sea during the Middle Ages. It approaches the issue from the double perspective of art and science, focusing on the Almohad astrolabes manufactured in Seville, the Nasrid ones made in Granada, and those built in Egypt and Syria under the Ayyubid rule. Attention is also given to the important invention of the Universal Astrolabe, a challenge for the Islamic astronomers resolved by means of a set of different instruments, all of them able to be used everywhere, irrespective of the latitude. The Universal Astrolabes themselves as much as the ideas behind their invention moved through the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages.
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Notes
- 1.
This study is part of the Spanish R&D Project “AL-ACMES: Al-Andalus, arte, ciencia y contextos en un Mediterráneo abierto. De Occidente a Egipto y Siria. (RTI2018-093880-B-I00)”, led by Susana Calvo and Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza. My deepest thanks to them for their support. Images of all the astrolabes mentioned in the text are publicly available in the related museums web sites.
- 2.
- 3.
A complete study of this oldest extant astrolabe in King 2005, p. 403–33.
- 4.
An overall view of universal (latitude independent) instruments in the Islamic world in King 1987, p. 121–32.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Two extant instruments reveal some similarities to the invention by ibn Khalaf. One dated 1327–1328 is kept in the Museum of History of Science in Oxford (see Puig 2004, p. 81) and the other one dated in the sixteenth century is in the Museum of Science and Technology in Madrid (see Moreno et al. 2002, p. 331–62).
- 8.
The astrolabe by Ibn al-Sarrāj is conserved in the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art (Athens, acc. nr. 13,178). An image of this astrolabe can be seen at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art website (https://www.benaki.org/index.php?option=com_collectionitems&view=collectionitem&id=117343&Itemid=162&lang=en)
- 9.
The stars indicated in the star pointers of this rete in Stautz 1997, p. 68, 213.
- 10.
A complete study of this astrolabe in King 2005, p. 503–17.
- 11.
- 12.
A detailed study of this astrolabe made by al-Khamā’irī in Seville in Hernández Pérez 2018b, p. 163–69.
- 13.
A detailed study of this astrolabe made by al-Khamā’irī in Seville in Hernández Pérez 2018b, p. 219–26.
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Hernández Pérez, A. (2021). Art and Science in al-Andalus and the Late Medieval Mediterranean Cultures: Almohad, Nasrid and Ayyubid Astrolabes in their Context. In: Marcos Cobaleda, M. (eds) Artistic and Cultural Dialogues in the Late Medieval Mediterranean. Mediterranean Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53366-3_12
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