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In regard to the astrolabe's religious function, the demands of Islamic prayer times were to be astronomically determined to ensure precise daily timings, and the qibla, the direction of Mecca towards which Muslims must pray, could also be determined by this device.
The astrolabe has served many purposes over time, and it has shown to be quite a key factor from medieval times to the present. The astrolabe required the use of mathematics, and the development of the instrument incorporated azimuth circles, which opened a series of questions on further mathematical dilemmas. [75]
The sundial was created on a slab of marble which was approximately 2 meters by 1 meter. The sundial being engraved on the marble was so that Ibn al-Shatir could read the time of the day in equinoctial (equal times) hours for the prayer times. [10] This sundial was later removed in the eighteenth century and a replica was put in its place.
In the Islamic world, astrolabes were used to find the times of sunrise and the rising of fixed stars, to help schedule morning prayers . In the 10th century, al-Sufi first described over 1,000 different uses of an astrolabe, in areas as diverse as astronomy, astrology, navigation, surveying, timekeeping, prayer, Salat, Qibla, etc. [31] [32]
The muvakkithane ("lodge of the muwaqqit") in Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. In the history of Islam, a muwaqqit (Arabic: مُوَقَّت, more rarely ميقاتي mīqātī; Turkish: muvakit) was an astronomer tasked with the timekeeping and the regulation of prayer times in an Islamic institution like a mosque or a madrasa.
Al-Ṣūfī also wrote about the astrolabe, finding numerous additional uses for it: According to American Near Eastern scholar Adam L. Bean, Al-Ṣūfī's work reportedly described over 1000 different uses in areas as diverse as astronomy, astrology, horoscopes, navigation, surveying, timekeeping, Qibla and Salat prayer. [9] [10]
In Islam, the direction of prayer is known as the qibla and this direction is towards the Sacred Mosque (al-Masjid al-Ḥarām) of Mecca.Originally the qibla of Muhammad and his followers in Medina was towards Jerusalem, but it was changed to Mecca after the Quranic verses (Al-Baqarah 2:144, 2:145) were revealed in the second Hijri year (624 CE), about 15 or 16 months after Muhammad's ...
It includes curves relevant for calculating prayer times, [11] arcs representing the zodiac signs, [12] and the construction of the azimuths. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] The markings involve calculations with parameters that depend on the local latitude , and one of Al-Qunawi's intentions was to make it easy for Ottoman astronomers and muwaqqit s to build a ...