From: Thomas Hockey et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, Springer Reference. New York: Springer, 2007, p. 540 |
Courtesy of |
Ḥusayn, Hasan
and Muḥammad
David A. King
Ḥasan Ḥusayn
Flourished Isfahan, (Iran),
second half of the 17th century
Muḥammad
Ḥusayn
Flourished Isfahan, (Iran),
second half of the 17th century
Ḥasan Ḥusayn and Muḥammad
Ḥusayn were two instrument makers in Isfahan,
Iran, and were somehow associated with the various better‐known makers
of fine astrolabes and other instruments that grace many a museum the world
over. Their two names, however, are new to the literature. They made European‐style
inclined sundials fitted with compass dials; two instruments made by each
one of them are of particular historical interest because the horizontal bases
for the sundials are engraved with world maps. These are fitted with complex
mathematical grids that preserve direction and distance to Mecca at the center.
The former (discovered in 2001) is more carefully engraved than the latter
(discovered in 1995), and a third example, unsigned and now missing sundial
and compass (known since 1989), may also be by Ḥasan Ḥusayn. The underlying mathematics and the geographical data used for
some 150 localities on each map are entirely within the Islamic tradition;
the former is attested in Arabic treatises from 10th and 11th centuries, and
the latter is taken from a 15th‐century source. Indeed, Muslim interest
in projections preserving direction and distance to the center goes back to
Ḥabash
al‐Ḥāsib and Bīrūnī,
each of whom wrote on the astrolabe with a melon‐shaped ecliptic on
the rete. However, we are still looking for a 17th‐century or earlier
Arabic or Persian treatise on the construction of the map‐grids, or
indeed for any new information on the school of instrument makers from which
these remarkable objects stem.
King, David A. (1999). World‐Maps for Finding the Direction
and Distance to Mecca: Innovation and Tradition in Islamic Science. Leiden:
E. J. Brill.
——— (2004). In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical
Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization. Vol.
1, The Call of the Muezzin (Studies I–IX). Leiden: Brill. VIIc (“Safavid
Mecca‐Centred World‐Maps–A Third Example and New Light on the
Origin of the Grids”).