Al-Zarqali
c. 1029 CE–c. 1100 CE · Cordoba
Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yahya al-Zarqali (Latin: Arzachel) was an astronomer and instrument-maker of al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), active in the eleventh century. He is also called al-Naqqash, "the engraver," and tradition holds that he rose from a family of skilled metalworkers — his manual craft, rather than book-learning, is said to have first brought him into scientific circles. His exact birthplace is debated: some sources place him in Cordoba, others in a village near Toledo.
In Toledo he joined the circle of the judge and scholar Sa'id al-Andalusi, working under the patronage of the city's rulers (the Banu Dhi'l-Nun, including al-Ma'mun). There he built astronomical instruments and water-clocks and, with collaborators, carried out the observations behind the Toledan Tables — a set of astronomical tables that, once translated into Latin, shaped European astronomy for over two centuries. He also designed a "universal" flat astrolabe, known in Latin as the Saphaea Arzachelis, usable at any latitude.
Modern scholars credit him with a refined model of the planet Mercury in which the relevant geometric path is oval, "like a pine nut." Some popular accounts call this an anticipation of Kepler's ellipses; specialists caution this is an overstatement — he did not propose sun-centered elliptical orbits. After Toledo fell to Christian Castile in 1085, he is reported to have moved to Cordoba, where recent research dates his death to 15 October 1100 (an older estimate of c. 1087 rested on his last recorded observations).
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CordobaקורדובהAl-Andalus, Spain
What they did here
Birthplace is contested in the sources: MacTutor and the Dictionary of Scientific Biography tradition place his birth and early training in Cordoba (c. 1029), while other accounts put him in a village near Toledo. He is traditionally said to have come from a family of metalworkers and to have been an expert engraver and instrument-maker (hence the by-name al-Naqqash) before turning to astronomy. The Cordoba pin reflects the more commonly cited account; the dispute is genuine and unresolved.
About Cordoba
Córdoba, on the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, southern Spain, came under Roman rule in the 3rd century BCE and, as Colonia Patricia, became capital of the province of Baetica; Seneca was a native. Taken by Muslim forces in 711 or 712, it became the seat of the Umayyad emirate founded by Abd al-Rahman I in 756 and of the caliphate proclaimed in 929, which ended in 1031. Its Great Mosque was begun in the 780s. The city was the birthplace of the Islamic scholars Ibn Hazm, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), later its chief judge, and the Quran commentator al-Qurtubi, and of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (usually dated 1138). Ferdinand III of Castile captured Córdoba in 1236, and the mosque became a cathedral.
Across the traditions, in Cordoba at the same time
In the same place & time
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Works
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