Dr. Taha Yasin Arslan

Our guest curator for this exhibition, Dr. Taha Yasin Arslan is a professor at Istanbul Medeniyet University, Turkey, and a research fellow at Oxford University, England. Dr. Arslan’s research focuses on astronomical instruments in the Islamic world, particularly the instruments from Mamluk Egypt and Syria between the 13th and the 15th centuries, as well as their reception in 15th- and 16th-century Ottoman Turkey. As part of his work, Dr. Arslan makes accurate replicas of original instruments, and hopes to eventually replicate the spherical astrolabe he is holding in the photo, which is his favourite instrument.