Fátima of Madrid (Tenth Century)

Abstract

A very interesting “case” is that of Fatima of Madrid. Such an Arab name associated to the capital of modern Spain should not be surprising once we know that she was an Andalusian astronomer who lived in the tenth century in Spain which at that time was called Al-Andalus. Indeed, in this historical period this territory had been ruled for more than two centuries by Muslims, as the outcome of the Muslim conquest of the Visigoths’ Hispania. The tenth century witnessed the magnificence of the Caliphate of Cordoba (929–1031) under which Spain was a beacon of learning, with its capital playing the role of a leading cultural and economic center in Europe as well as in the Islamic world. Like other Muslim countries of those centuries, the importance of Al-Andalus in the history of science came not only from its achievements in trigonometry, astronomy and other scientific fields, but also from its role as a conduit for culture and science between the Islamic and Christian worlds, which allowed the renaissance of science in Europe after its eclipse during the early Medieval Age. It is in such favorable environment that this woman could work, in close collaboration with her father, the Islamic astronomer and scientist al-Maslamah Mayriti, whose name means “man from Madrid” and thus known as “El Madrileno”.