Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

54 • The Making of Islamic Sciencethe numerical values of the letters emerged. This has numerousdimensions, ranging from mystical interpretations of the QurāĀn tothe tradition of writing verses from which the date of death of thedeceased can be calculated. Thus, numbers were not merely symbolsof quantities; through geometrical shapes on the one hand and thescience of jafr on the other, they represented numerous spiritual andaesthetic aspects of the created order.AstronomyTwo verses of the QurāĀn played a key role in establishing a nexusbetween astronomy and Islam. The first established the lunar year asconsisting of twelve months, four of which were specified as sacred (Q.9:32); the second (Q. 2:149–50) changed the direction of the qiblahfrom Jerusalem toward the Ka‘bah in Makkah, requiring Muslimsto face this direction for the ritual prayers and certain other acts ofworship. The QurāĀnic injunction to establish salah, the ritual prayers,at specific times also caused the development of a special branch ofreligious astronomy called ilm al-miqat, the science dealing with threedistinct aspects requiring astronomical solutions: the direction ofqiblah, the determination of the times for prayers, and the visibilityof the new moon. We have a precise definition of this science by afourteenth-century Egyptian scholar, Ibn al-Akfani, who was theauthor of an encyclopedia and several works on medicine. He states,The science of astronomical timekeeping is a branch ofknowledge for finding the hours of the day and night and theirlengths and the way in which they vary. Its use is in finding thetimes of prayer and in determining the direction in which oneshould pray, as well as in finding the ascendant and the rightand oblique ascensions from the fixed stars and the lunarmansions. This science is also concerned with shadow lengthsand the altitudes of celestial bodies, and with the orientation ofone city from another. (King 2004, 648)Initially approximate methods based on folk astronomy wereused to determine the direction and times of prayers. Thesemethods used astronomical phenomena visible to the naked eye,the direction of winds, the position of stars, and the like. But as