ISLAMIC PERIOD

The name “astrolabe” probably comes from the Arabic version of the Greek term “star holder.” As early as the fourth century AD, Greek astronomical texts were being translated into Syriac and Arabic and filtering into the Islamic world. The astronomer Nastulus, of what is now Iraq, made the earliest surviving astrolabe circa 927/8. Islamic astrolabes are unique in the degree to which they assist the religion founded by the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century AD. Their features include tools for judicial astrology, for determining the five or more prayer times of each day, and for finding the direction of Mecca.

EUROPEAN PERIOD

In the eighth century AD, the Islamic world extended into Spain. It was from there that Greek and Islamic texts on the astrolabe were translated into Latin and reintroduced into Europe. Hermann “the Lame” wrote of the instrument in the 11th century, as did Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. At about the same time as Chaucer, Jean Fusoris of Paris established the fist known commercial instrument workshop in Europe. European makers rediscovered and improved older Islamic designs and added their own stylistic hallmarks. For example, the retes on Flemish astrolabes like that on this shelf by Arsenius, mimic tulips. Soon the astrolabe was being produced for all types of astronomy, navigation and surveying. But other instruments began to replace it in Europe in the 17th century, and later in some parts of the Islamic world.