Early Exploration of the Earth and Stars

Astronomy and geography figured prominently among the sciences that developed in the Islamic world from Indian and Greek roots, especially with regard to practical questions linked to the Muslim lunar calendar and the seasons. Muslim astrology also developed using data based on astronomy.

The intense intellectual environment of the Sudanese universities paved the way for geographical exploration across African seas to Europe and America.

According to some historians, Mansa Abubakari II, the emperor of Mali who assembled two fleets of two hundred ships, sent two expeditions into the Atlantic as early as 1310, 182 years before Christopher Columbus.

All this proves that the Sudanese were already aware of the secret maps of transatlantic maritime routes that Christopher Columbus would buy at a premium two centuries later.

The following manuscript is a 16th-century copy of the manuscript ‘Combination of happiness on the explanation of the book Lāmiyyat al-‘Ajam’, written by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Abīk al-Ṣafadī.

This is also thus between Mercury and Venus, Venus and Mars, and Mars and Jupiter, the former eclipsing the latter which are therefore in lower positions."

The next manuscript is a commentary on a text composed in verse by Abd al-Rahman al-Akhdari (1575), a great jurisconsult and multidisciplinary scholar. He wrote about logic, arithmetic, and astrology, including the annotated text he entitled ‘Al-Siraj fi ‘Ilm al-Falak’ or ‘'The Enlightened Path to Science and Astronomy’.

This celebration brings together the whole community for readings from the Quran. It ends with a form of clairvoyance, or a proclamation of events, and the announcement of the sadaqah or alms that the communities and the local and regional chief must perform as sacrifices for the good of the year ahead.

Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Mᾱzinī al-Gharnᾱtī al-Awqalīshī Abū Ḥᾱmid was an Arab traveler born in Granada in 1080. His travels took him to Alexandria in Egypt in 1114 and Baghdad in Iraq in 1122.

Three years later, he moved to Mosul, where he met a scholar named Mu’in al-Din. This scholar encouraged him to write about what he had seen and heard on his many trips. In response, he wrote the book Gift to Friends on the Elite Wonders.

The presence in Timbuktu of manuscripts on the rotation of the planets and eclipses provides proof of the knowledge of mathematics in the city 200 years before Galileo and Copernicus.