Al-ʻIjliyyah

Al-ʻIjliyyah was a 10th-century astrolabe maker who worked in Aleppo under the Hamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla.

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Sayf al-Dawla: A Hamdanid ruler who governed Aleppo from 945 to 967 and patronized poets and scholars. Al-ʻIjliyyah is associated with astrolabe making in his Aleppo court.
Astrolabe: An astronomical instrument that models the sky and supports calculations of time, celestial positions, and direction. It is the instrument Al-ʻIjliyyah is reported to have made.
Ibn al-Nadim: A 10th-century Baghdad bookseller and bibliographer whose Fihrist catalogued authors, books, and fields of knowledge. His period helps locate the surviving medieval record about instrument makers.
Women in the history of science: The study of women’s participation, recognition, and representation in the development of scientific knowledge. Al-ʻIjliyyah is frequently cited in accounts seeking to recover women’s technical work.
Ibrahim ibn Sinan: A 10th-century mathematician and astronomer from Baghdad known for work on geometry and sundials. His contemporary scholarship shows the mathematical culture surrounding instrument makers.
Planispheric astrolabe: A flat astrolabe whose rotating star map represents the apparent daily motion of the celestial sphere. This was the principal astrolabe design used across the medieval Islamic world.
Fihrist: A 10th-century Arabic bibliographical catalogue compiled by Ibn al-Nadim. It is among the sources used to investigate names and scholarly crafts of the era.
History of Islamic science: The study of scientific ideas, institutions, and practices across societies shaped by Islam. Her story is used to illustrate the people and crafts behind medieval Islamic astronomy.
Al-Battani: A 9th- and 10th-century astronomer whose observations and mathematical tables influenced later astronomy. His astronomical work formed part of the wider intellectual setting for astrolabe use.
Astrolabe rete: The openwork rotating plate of an astrolabe that marks selected stars and the ecliptic. Its precision engraving exemplifies the specialized metalwork astrolabe making required.