Illustration dipicting Taqi al-Din's sextant in the Istanbul Observatory

To help them get more accurate calculations and observations of the heavens, scholars of astronomy in Muslim civilisations pioneered huge observational instruments. Both the Damascus and Maragha observatories had large scale instruments, and so did Taqi al-Din's (1526 - 1585) Istanbul Observatory which this illustration, taken from the manuscript 'Alat-I Rasadiya li Zij-I Shahinshahiya', or (Astronomical Observational Instruments), shows.