History of Astronomy and Space Science in the Islamic World

Abstract

Throughout Islamic history, important rituals have been tightly connected to the movement of celestial bodies. Daily prayers have been aligned with the place of the sun in the sky. Finding the direction of Mecca has required many believers to look at the stars or, more recently, connect to a satellite. The beginnings of months, including Ramadan, have depended on the visibility of the moon. Astronomy has thus had a central place in Islamic culture. Astronomers have contributed to the construction and running of mosques, taught in madrasas, and advised rulers. In addition, they have also contributed to global science through planetary models and calculation. In the centuries after the Arab conquests, Muslim scholars translated and built on earlier learning in the areas that Islam reached. They thus also served as a bridge between the geocentric model of Ptolemy and the heliocentrism of Nicolaus Copernicus in Europe. In modern and contemporary times, the legacy of such medieval achievements has formed a valuable resource for countering racism and Islamophobia. For all of these reasons, the history of astronomy in the Muslim world has attracted much attention, arguably even more than botany or zoology, for instance. With few exceptions, most historians have specialized either in the medieval or the modern period. This has to do in part with the huge differences in cosmologies and technologies between the 12th and the 20th centuries. Another reason for this temporal specialization has been differences in source material: manuscripts versus typed and printed materials. The study of modern astroculture, including science fiction, also requires methods of analysis from outside of the history of mathematical astronomy, such as art and literary criticism. However, some scholars arguably neglected the modern period due to the belief that the greatest flourishing of Islam and its science occurred during the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, we also have some works that cover scientific developments over different periods.