ابن الشاطر
ابن الشاطر
The Damascene muwaqqit-instrument maker who, finding no existing instrument — astrolabe, shakkaziyya or zarqala — could serve every horary work at every latitude without defect, designed 'al-rub' al-tamm', the complete quadrant answering all works at all horizons 1.
At a glance
- Roles
- Scholar
- Era
- The Mongol and Post-Mongol Era
- Region
- Levant & Iraq
- Review
- Draft Completeness 2/5 · Help complete it
Overview
Ala' al-Din Ali ibn Ibrahim al-Ansari, known as Ibn al-Shatir, a timekeeping engineer (muwaqqit) in Damascus. 1
Haji Khalifa says of him that he studied the astronomical instruments closely and found that they did not serve every task at every latitude. He judged that the error entered them because of difficulty in setting them or because some parts moved against others and their lines crowded together. He therefore devised an instrument he called al-Rub' al-Tamm (The Complete Quadrant), which yields every task in every climate. 1
Sources
- Kashf al-Zunun an Asami al-Kutub wa'l-Funun — Hajji Khalifa (Furqan ed.), p. 570-571
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “ابن الشاطر”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/ibn-al-shatir/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Accessed 2026-10-17.