Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

64 • The Making of Islamic ScienceThe astrolabe was the most important astronomicalinstrument used by Muslim astronomers andmathematicians. Of pre-Islamic origins, the astrolabe wasgreatly improved by Muslims.These opposing currents appeared in Islamic tradition at thebeginning of the translation movement, in the middle of the eighthcentury, and became particularly strong in the middle of the eleventhcentury when almost the entire corpus of Greek philosophical andscientific works had been translated into Arabic.Other branches of physics—such as optics, mechanics, anddynamics—were included in the standard works of Muslim scientistsand philosophers, and though much of it remained Aristotelian in