Al Fazari

Tuesday, 01 April 2008

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Al-Fazari Muhammad ibn Ibrahim who was an astronomer that flourished around the second half of the 8th century CE in Baghdad. He is first heard of in connection with the building of Baghdad in the latter half of 762, when he was associated with the other early scholars of Islam: Nawbakht, Masha'Allah and Umar ibn Al Farrukhan Al-Tabari who were themselves involved in the same task.

The first work that Al-Fazari completed was the Zij Al-Sindhind Al-kabir which bore much Indian influence.

Probably around 790, Al-Fazari completed the Zij ala sinin Al-Arab (Astronomical tables according to the years of the Arabs) in which he apparently tabulated the mean motions of the planets for one to sixty saura days, 10 to 60 saura days (60 saura days being equal to one sideral year), one to sixty sideral years and an unknown number of sixty years periods; he obviously added tables for converting kalpa aharganas into Hijra dates. Of this latter set of tables we still have copies of the Mujarrad tables for finding the day of the week with which each Muslim year and month begin. Al-Fazari also gives a list of the countries of the world and their dimensions from this zij. Al-Fazari's other works, understandably, are little known. They include, however, a few lines of his poem Qasida fi ilm Al-Nujum (Poem on the science of the stars) which have been preserved by the 13th century traveller-geographer Yaqut Al-Hamawi and Al-Safadi. Bibliographers, more importantly, have recorded books on the use of the plane astrolabe with Al-Fazari said to be the first in Islamic civilisation to have constructed one