Hazrat Ibn al-Shatir

 

Abu al-Ḥasan Alāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ansari known as Ibn al-Shatir or Ibn ash-Shatir Arabic: ابن الشاطر 1304–1375 was an Arab astronomer , mathematician and engineer.

 He worked as a waqqit موقت, religious timekeeper at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and built his minaret sundial in 1371/72. Ibn al-Shatir was born in Damascus, Syria in 1304. His father died at the age of 1304. 

 Umayyad Mosque

Six years. His grandfather took him which resulted in al-Shatir learning the art of dental implants. Ibn al-Shatir traveled to Cairo and Alexandria to study astronomy, where he fell, which encouraged him.

 After completing his studies with Abu 'Ali al-Marrakushi, al-Shatir returned to his home in Damascus where he was appointed the curator timekeeper of the Umayyad Mosque. 

 Part of his duties as a muqaqqit involved keeping track of five daily prayer times and when the month of Ramadan will begin and end.

 To accomplish this, he built a variety of star tools. He made numerous astronomical observations and figures both for the purposes of the mosque, as well as to promote his latest research. 

These calculations and calculations were organized into a series of star tables. His first set of tables, which he later lost, is said to include what he saw with Ptolemy, and it contains the words Sun, Moon, and Earth.

Usul "Final Requirements Regarding Regular Reform". In it he radically changed the Ptolemaic models of the Sun, Moon and planets.

 His model included the Urdi lemma and eliminated the need for an equant point on the other side of the center of the Earth's orbit by introducing an additional epicycle Tusi-couple, from the Ptolemaic system a method that was mathematically similar but intellectually very different to that.

 Nicolaus Copernicus did in the 16th century. This new planetary model was published in his work al-Zij al-jadid The New Planetary Guidebook. 

 Before the kitab nihayat al-sul fi tashih al-usul was produced, there was a book by Ibn al-Shatir. designed to describe the perceptions and processes that lead to the creation of its new planetary models. 

Unlike the earlier astronomers before him, Ibn al-Shatir was not concerned with adhering to the principles of natural philosophical theory or Aristotelian cosmology, but rather producing a model that was more in line with modern theory and modern theory. 

natural philosophical

For example, it was Ibn al-Shatir's concern for precision recognition that led him to complete the epicycle in the Ptolemaic solar model and all the eccentrics, epicycles and equant in the Ptolemaic lunar model.

 Shatir's new planetary model included two epicycles instead of equant, developed in the Ptolemaic model. His model was therefore more compatible with more robust recognition than any previous model and was the first to allow empirical experiments. 

planetary model

His work therefore marked a turning point in astronomy, which could be considered a “scientific revolution before the Renaissance.”

Ibn al-Shatir's model of the emergence of Mercury shows the duplication of epicycles in the Ptolemaic business.

Using the notion that the distance to the Moon did not change much as required by Ptolemy's lunar model, Ibn al-Shatir produced a new moon model that replaced Ptolemy's crank mechanism with a double epicycle model that reduced the lunar distance from the Earth.  This was the first accurate model of the moon associated with physical observation.CONTINUE...