천문학의 부활 이슬람 전통과 현대 우주 연구의 연결고리
📝 Abstract
From al-Sufi’s tenth-century observation of the Andromeda Galaxy as a “little cloud” to contemporary space missions, Islamic astronomy represents a millennium-spanning tradition of innovation and knowledge. This study traces its trajectory through three phases: the Golden Age (8th to 15th centuries), when scholars such as al-Biruni, al-Battani, and Ibn Sina developed instruments, cataloged the heavens, and refined theories that later influenced Copernicus; a period of decline (late 15th to 17th centuries), shaped by political fragmentation, economic shifts, and the delayed adoption of technologies such as printing and the telescope; and today’s revival, marked by observatory collaborations, Olympiad successes, and emerging space programs in Morocco, Iran, Turkey, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. This comparative analysis with Chinese and European scientific traditions shows how Islamic astronomy provided a vital link in the global history of science, transmitting mathematical rigor, observational methods, and Arabic star names that are still used today. The contemporary resurgence signals the potential for renewed contributions to astrophysics, provided that it is supported by regional observatory networks, space-based research initiatives, and educational frameworks that integrate historical heritage with modern computational science.
💡 Analysis
From al-Sufi’s tenth-century observation of the Andromeda Galaxy as a “little cloud” to contemporary space missions, Islamic astronomy represents a millennium-spanning tradition of innovation and knowledge. This study traces its trajectory through three phases: the Golden Age (8th to 15th centuries), when scholars such as al-Biruni, al-Battani, and Ibn Sina developed instruments, cataloged the heavens, and refined theories that later influenced Copernicus; a period of decline (late 15th to 17th centuries), shaped by political fragmentation, economic shifts, and the delayed adoption of technologies such as printing and the telescope; and today’s revival, marked by observatory collaborations, Olympiad successes, and emerging space programs in Morocco, Iran, Turkey, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. This comparative analysis with Chinese and European scientific traditions shows how Islamic astronomy provided a vital link in the global history of science, transmitting mathematical rigor, observational methods, and Arabic star names that are still used today. The contemporary resurgence signals the potential for renewed contributions to astrophysics, provided that it is supported by regional observatory networks, space-based research initiatives, and educational frameworks that integrate historical heritage with modern computational science.
📄 Content
1 Introduction: Looking Up, Looking Forward This paper traces the trajectory of astronomy in the Islamic world: the pioneering work of early Muslim astronomers who mapped the heavens, the subsequent period of decline, and the revival that has begun in the modern era.
In 964 CE, astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi looked into the night sky of the Persian city of Isfahan and recorded something extraordinary. Adjacent to the familiar stars of the Andromeda constellation, he noticed an obscure smudge of light, a “little cloud” that seemed to drift in the dark night Kunitzsch [1989]. With no access to telescopes, which had yet to be invented, and no knowledge of galaxies, he discovered one trillion suns, an island universe 2.5 million light-years away. His observation would make history, becoming the first written record of a galaxy outside the Milky Way. A millennium later, we are now able to revisit these very same celestial wonders, contrasting al-Sufi’s naked-eye accounts with new high-resolution images captured through modern astrophotography.
A Persian scholar, Al-Battani, documenting the sky from a medieval courtyard, perfectly captured the essence of Islamic astronomy at its peak. For nearly seven centuries, the Islamic world advanced humanity’s understanding of the universe with unmatched institutional support and sophistication in mathematics. This period was the Golden Age for Islamic astronomy: faith and philosophy converged with empiricism to depict the heavens with precision that would not be surpassed until the 16th century. Al-Battani’s planetary observations achieved accuracies that Copernicus would cite centuries later as a foundation of heliocentrism. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) recorded the changing colors and “sparks” of the Supernova 1006 “new star” (SN 1006) with unusual detail that scholars still analyze in modern research literature. Al-Biruni used the timings of lunar eclipses to determine longitude differences between cities and separately applied spherical trigonometry in a mountain horizon experiment to estimate Earth’s radius; this was centuries before trigonometry was systematized in Europe by Regiomontanus.
Their innovations extended beyond pure observation to technological and methodological breakthroughs that defined pre-telescopic astronomy. The astrolabe, an ancient instrument used for navigation, became both a scientific instrument and a spiritual compass, guiding prayer times and navigation with equal precision across three continents. Massive mural instruments, culminating in sextants nearly 40 meters in radius at Samarkand, pushed arcminute-level scale divisions with multi-arcminute accuracy in practice. That standard was passed only in the late sixteenth century, at Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg on Hven (constructed 1576 to 1580), where giant naked-eye instruments yielded catalog accuracies of about 1 to 2 arcminutes. Star catalogues systematically corrected ancient Greek errors while preserving observational data that remain scientifically valuable. This was a civilization where science and spirituality reinforced each other, and where measuring the heavens deepened faith rather than threaten it.
However, the pace of progress slowed, and obstacles began to interfere; political fragmentation destroyed the support networks behind long-term exploratory projects, and Samarkand’s great observatory was abandoned after Ulugh Beg’s 1449 assassination. As Atlantic-oriented trade reshaped economies, Europe absorbed Islamic astronomy-Al-Battani’s trigonometry was explicitly cited by Copernicus-then amplified it with the arrival of printing in the 15th century, the invention of the telescope in the Netherlands (1608), its rapid astronomical use by Galileo (1609), and the formation of universities that helped sustain research in spite of numerous political upheavals.
In recent years, however, astronomical progress in the region has started to gain momentum again. Across many nations in the Middle East, scientists, students, and educational institutions are re-engaging with astronomy in technically advanced ways. Moroccan observatories are contributing valuable data to global sky surveys. In Iran, students trained in computational astrophysics are winning International Astronomy Olympiads, while Saudi astronomers have developed ways to improve imaging lunar crescents even in the daytime. The UAE now operates the Hope probe orbiting Mars, a mission that has received the attention of the public. These achievements are representations of the resurgence of astronomical research in the Islamic world and are inspired, in a way, by a centuries-old legacy in the region.
In the section that follows, we review categories of celestial objects studied by scholars in the Islamic world, such as al-Sufi’s little cloudy mass in constellation Andromeda, comets, supernovae such as the 1006 and 1054 events, and solar and lunar eclipse records that bound theory to practice. Next, we compare these observations using
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