Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Urdi

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Manuscript of al-Urdi's Risala fi Kayfiyyat al-Arsad wa-ma Yuhtaju Ila 'ilmihi Wa-'Amalihi Min al-Turuq al-Mu'addiya ila Ma'rifat 'Awdat al-Kawakib. Copy created in Iran, dated 15th century

Al-Urdi (full name: Moayad Al-Din Al-Urdi Al-Amiri Al-Dimashqi)

Arabic: مؤيد الدين العرضي العامري الدمشقي) (d. 1266) was a medieval Syrian Arab astronomer and geometer.[2]

Born circa 1200, presumably (from the

Hulagu.[1] Al-Urdi's most notable works are Risālat al-Raṣd, a treatise on observational instruments, and Kitāb al-Hayʾa (كتاب الهيئة), a work on theoretical astronomy. His influence can be seen on Bar Hebraeus and Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, in addition to being quoted by Ibn al-Shatir.[1]

Al-Urdi contributed to the construction of the observatory outside of the city, constructing special devices and water wheels in order to supply the observatory, which was built on a hill, with drinking water. He also constructed some of the instruments used in the observatory, in the year 1261/2. Al-Urdi's son, who also worked in the observatory, made a copy of his father's Kitāb al‐Hayʾa and also constructed a celestial globe in 1279.[3]

Al-Urdi is a member of the group of Islamic astronomers of the 13th and 14th centuries who were active in the criticism of the astronomical model presented in

Copernicus
. This concerns the "Urdi lemma" in particular, an extension of
epicycle that moved around a deferent centered at half the distance to the equant point.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. (PDF version
    )
  2. ^ "Urdi". islamsci.mcgill.ca.
  3. ^ This globe was bought by Augustus, Elector of Saxony in 1562 and since then has been kept in Dresden (now in Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon). Drechsler, Adolph (1873). Der Arabische Himmels‐Globus angefertigt 1279 zu Maragha von Muhammed bin Muwajid Elardhi zugehörig dem Königl. Mathematisch‐physikalischen Salon zu Dresden Dresden: Königl. Hofbuchhandlung von Hermann Burdach. (2nd edition reprinted in Sezgin, Astronomische Instrumente, Vol. 4, pp. 215–241; (reprinted in Sezgin, School of Marāgha, Vol. 1, pp. 261–289).
  4. ^ Saliba, George (2007). Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. MIT Press. p. 203 – via EBSCOHost.

Further reading

  • George Saliba (1979). "The First Non-Ptolemaic Astronomy at the Maraghah School", Isis 70 (4), p. 571-576.
  • George Saliba (1990). The Astronomical Work of Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi (d. 1266): A Thirteenth Century Reform of Ptolemaic Astronomy, Markaz dirasat al-Wahda al-'Arabiya, Beirut.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mu%27ayyad_al-Din_al-Urdi&oldid=1133831718"