Astrolabe Catalogue

William Laud (1573-1645), Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of Oxford University, owned two astrolabes, both of which are now in the collection. In the 1630s he gave both of them to Oxford institutions: his European one by Georg Hartmann (inventory number 38642 [ID 227]) to St John's College, of which he had been President; and his Islamic one (this one) to the Bodleian Library. Both bear his coat of arms impaled by the arms of Canterbury.

Gifts of this kind were important tokens of patronage and power. But Laud was also concerned, along with contemporaries like Selden and Savile, to expand Oxford's academic horizons, by promoting both mathematical studies and interest in oriental language and culture. The Bodleian astrolabe is believed to have been given to Laud by John Selden, whose own astrolabe also came to the Bodleian Library (inventory no. 37527).

Laud's astrolabe, however, compared for instance to Selden's, is not a particularly impressive example. It is rather coarsely made and of no great antiquity, and if not a poor western copy may be an early example of astrolabes made to low standards in parts of the Islamic world (such as the ports of North Africa) for sale to European travellers.

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