At a glance
- Roles
- Scholar · writer
- Region
- Anatolia
Life in time
Cosmology and creationAstronomy and timekeeping
Summary
Ibrahim al-Qaramani al-Amidi was a scholar from Amida, present-day Diyarbakir in eastern Anatolia; the Süleymaniye Library catalogues give his death as 1000 AH (1591/1592). 1 Heinen places him in the period usually regarded as the "old age" of science among Muslims, after the closing of the Istanbul observatory. 1
His works
He wrote "The Book of Astronomy based on the tenets of the People of Tradition and Community, not on those of the Philosophers", which Heinen first noticed through Aydın Sayılı's The Observatory in Islam. 1 In Turkish libraries Heinen found many treatises with nearly identical titles by him, or Turkish translations and adaptations of them, and concluded that they were among the most popular books of the time. 3
His sources
Al-Qaramani candidly admits that he took all the material of his "Islamic astronomy" from older authorities; his most important source was al-Hay'a al-saniyya of al-Suyuti, written about a century before he began to write. 2
Connections
People and things also explored
al-Hay'a al-sunniyya (tradition-based cosmology)· al-Hay'a al-saniyya fi al-hay'a al-sunniyya (The Radiant Cosmography)· Kitab ilm al-hay'a ala i'tiqad ahl al-sunna wa-l-jama'a dun al-falasifa (al-Hay'a al-islamiyya)· The earth's rotation and the ship analogy in Islamic astronomy· Pari Mahal, Srinagar· Sharaf al-Dawla's observatory at Baghdad· Qibla-finding by stars, winds, mountains and rivers· Sizes of the heavenly bodies
Sources
- Anton M. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology: A Study of as-Suyuti's al-Hay'a as-saniya fi l-hay'a as-sunniya (Beirut, 1982) , p. 17
- Anton M. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology: A Study of as-Suyuti's al-Hay'a as-saniya fi l-hay'a as-sunniya (Beirut, 1982) , p. 19
- Anton M. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology: A Study of as-Suyuti's al-Hay'a as-saniya fi l-hay'a as-sunniya (Beirut, 1982) , p. 18
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Ibrahim al-Qaramani al-Amidi”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/ibrahim-al-qaramani-al-amidi/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-04.
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