Arabic in the Sky: Astronomy a thousand years ago

The night sky inspires poetry, music, philosophy and science, and it was no different in the Muslim world a millennium ago.

Scholars in Muslim civilisation made considerable advances in the study of astronomy.

They made important discoveries, developed instruments observatories and planetariums, leaving a legacy of accurate observations and astronomical tables.

Eminent astronomers and scientists from that time are remembered today through their legacy.

Some have their names given to craters on the Moon, and the Arabic names they used for the stars are still in use today with 165 stars still bearing Arabic names.

The 10th-century Persian astronomer AbdulRahman al-Sufi was the first astronomer to mention the Andromeda galaxy - the Milky Way's next-door neighbour.

He named it 'little cloud'.

The names of the stars that are still known by their Arabic names include:

Leo's Denebola, which comes from the Arabic word dhanab, meaning 'the lion's tail', and Orion's Rigel, meaning 'the foot'.

And there are many more.

The brightest star in Taurus is the orange-coloured Aldebaran, named after the Arabic phrase for 'the follower'.

In search of ever-more-accurate calculations and observations of the heavens, scholars in Muslim civilisation created huge observational instruments.

Observatories in Damascus and Maragha were equipped with large-scale instruments.

Taqi al-Din's (1526 - 1585) Istanbul Observatory, shown in this illustration also had leading equipment.

It was Caliph Al-Ma'mum who began the Muslim tradition of building observatories for studying the stars and planets when he founded facilities in Al-Shammasiyah quarter in Baghdad, and on Mount Qasiyun in Damascus.

Other rulers later established large observatories like Malikshah, in Isfahan; Maragha, in East Azerbijan; Ulugh Beg, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan; and Taqi al-Din, in Istanbul depicted in this 16th-century Turkish manuscript from the Book of the Kings.

The foundations of the 13th-century Maragha Observatory are still visible today, and it is part of UNESCO's Astronomy and World Heritage Initiative.

Many astronomers were reportedly linked to the Maragha Observatory including Jamal al-Din who, according to Chinese records, became famous in China and became known as Cha-ma-lu-ting after he visited the Imperial Court in Beijing in 1267 and brought with him several astronomical instruments.