Researchers
Astronomy
Astronomy in Islamic civilisation: from the great observatories of Samarqand, Maragha and Baghdad to the astrolabe in every sailor's and traveller's hand. Al-Battani measured the planets' courses with a precision his age had not known; al-Tusi at Maragha wrote planetary models that reached Copernicus centuries later; Ulugh Beg drew the star tables — the zij — that stayed the astronomers' reference. From their names the Arabs' stars stay in our sky: Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, the Pleiades and Deneb. Religion played its part too: fixing the qibla, the prayer times and the Hijri months drove this science daily. To it goes much of science's history: stars we named, observations we taught the generations, and instruments inherited by Malaccan and Portuguese sailors after us.