The collaboration of Islamic and Jewish scientists led to the development of an impressive 11th-century astrolabe, blending together their respective knowledge and methods. This intersection of cultures produced an astounding achievement in the field of science.
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About a year ago, Federica Gigante was getting ready to give a presentation and browsing the internet for a picture of Ludovico Moscardo, an Italian nobleman and art collector from the 17th century, when she came across a completely unexpected image.
The historian was quickly drawn to a photograph of a metal disk with a ring at the top, which was housed in the same Verona museum as Moscardo’s painting.
Upon seeing the object, Gigante quickly recognized it as an astrolabe, a tool for charting stars and telling time. She soon realized that it was a remarkably unique and valuable item, but it wasn’t until three months later when she visited the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi Erizzo and observed how the light shone through the museum window, highlighting the brass details of the instrument, that she fully comprehended its rarity and significance.
She stated that the item was much older than previously thought. At the time, she was unaware that it contained Hebrew writing. It was not until they moved it to a different room and she began examining it that she noticed peculiar scratches. The light from outside revealed the markings, which were not typical of wear and tear. Initially, she attributed it to fatigue, but the markings continued to appear.
Gigante, a research associate at Cambridge University’s history faculty and a former curator of Islamic scientific instruments at Oxford University’s History of Science Museum, had stumbled on a remarkable astrolabe that has passed through Muslim, Jewish and Christian hands in Spain, North Africa and Italy in the 10 centuries since it was constructed in Andalucía.
The engravings, initially in Arabic writing and later in Hebrew, narrate the tale of how wisdom was formed, exchanged, and advanced by Islamic and Jewish intellectuals coexisting and collaborating in al-Andalus, the region in the Iberian peninsula under Muslim rule.
Islamic art is Gigante’s forte, but she knew enough of the Hebrew alphabet to spot that someone had translated the original Arabic names of the astrological signs on the astrolabe into Hebrew. Then she noticed that one of the instrument’s plates was marked Toledo on one side and Córdoba on the other.
The positions of the stars on the instrument were consistent with those on astrolabes created between 1060 and 1070. Additionally, one of its plates has markings of latitudes in North Africa, indicating that the device was owned by someone from that region or who frequently traveled there.
According to the historian, it is similar to installing an app on a smartphone or performing an update.
It is difficult to determine the exact timeline of the Verona astrolabe’s journey, but Gigante believes it was created in Andalucía and then brought to North Africa, possibly Morocco, before ending up in the hands of a Jewish owner.
“She mentioned that there was an inscription or signature on the object saying, ‘For Isaac, the work of Jonah.’ These are both Jewish names, indicating that the astrolabe may have been owned by a Jewish person at one point. However, it is intriguing that the writing is in Arabic. This suggests that while it may have been owned by Jews, Arabic was still a commonly used language by Jews, Muslims, and Christians.”
A collection of Hebrew inscriptions was intricately and skillfully etched, according to her. “There are also some surface scratches that appear to have been made by keys. These two sets of writing are distinct and illustrate the various stages the object has undergone, indicating its long history within a community.”
Per Gigante, the inclusion of Hebrew indicates that the astrolabe eventually departed from Spain or North Africa and came into use among the Jewish diaspora in Italy, where Hebrew was the predominant language rather than Arabic.
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The most recent engravings, written in Western numbers, were likely created by an individual who is Italian or a speaker of Latin. According to Gigante, the astrolabe was eventually acquired by Moscardo and became a part of his collection. It was then passed down through marriage to the Miniscalchi family, who established the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi Erizzo in 1990 to safeguard the collections.
Gigante recently wrote an article about the Verona astrolabe, which was published in the journal Nuncius. She stated that discovering the device was a serendipitous combination of her fascination with scientific instruments and her studies on the dissemination of Islamic artifacts, technology, and adornment to Europe.
She stated that the revelation was unprecedented and unlikely to occur again. We are aware that during the 11th century in Spain, individuals of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faiths collaborated together, particularly in the field of science. It was common for Muslim leaders to support and sponsor Jewish scientists, regardless of their religious beliefs.
“It’s not that this instrument tells us this for the first time. All this is known, but what I find extraordinary is that this is a very tangible, physical proof of that history.”
Source: theguardian.com
