Instruments

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Oliver Hoare once said "The ability of Islamic civilization to perfect what it inherited, and to endow what it made with beauty, is nowhere better expressed than in the astrolabe". Over a...

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Lund Astronomical Clock

The genesis of this article lies in a recent visit to the Romanesque cathedral of Lund. While in the cathedral, I walked over to the medieval astronomical clock to await the moving figures and music...

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Ibn Yunus and The Pendulum: A History of Errors

In this article, Professor David A. King explores the authenticity of the statement that tenth-century Egyptian astronomer Ibn Yūnus was the first person to use a pendulum to measure time. After...

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Principle and Use of Ottoman Sundials

Muslim astronomers and engineers invented a variety of dials for timekeeping and for determining the times of the five daily prayers. In this thorough and technical study, Professor Attila Bir...

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Using an Astrolabe

The history of the astrolabe begins more than two thousand years ago, but it is in the Islamic classical world that the astrolabe was highly developed and its uses widely multiplied. Introduced to...

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