Astrolabe Catalogue

That the astrolabe in the Islamic world carried religious significance need hardly be stressed. It was frequently embellished with verses from the Qur’an or other devout phrases. The much-quoted surah 2:255 includes the most apt lines ‘All things in heaven and on earth belong to Him [God]’ and ‘His throne extends over the heavens and the earth’. The passage was frequently inscribed in full on the ‘throne’ of the astrolabe.

If the astrolabe was seen as capable of bridging the gap between the mundane and religious worlds, two instruments in the collection exemplify a very special way for it to do so. This instrument by al-Baṭṭuṭī is inscribed as having been ‘given as a bequest’ to the minaret of Idrīs at Fez, Morocco, that is, to a mosque. The other (inventory no. 34314) was similarly bequeathed to the mosque at Tangier, perhaps by a wealthy merchant.

The phrase probably means not that the worshipper left his own, used astrolabe to his mosque, but rather that he left funds for a particularly fine astrolabe to be specially made. To underline one of its sacred functions, in determining prayer times by true astronomical time, this astrolabe contains special lines for the calculation of Muslim prayer times.

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