Central Asian Astronomy and Mathematics

Wm. Clay Poe

Professor of Archaeology Emeritus
Sonoma State Univrsity

“And I have truly done what everyone is bound to do in respect of any particular
science, that is, to accept gratefully the original contributions of his predecessors,
to correct fearlessly the errors that come to his notice and to preserve what he
himself discovers and to leave it as a record for the future generations that are to
follow him in time.”
(Al-Birûni, Canon Masûdicus, 1037 CE)

Early Islamic Califates

The first of the Islamic Califates following the death of Muhammad is called the Rashidun, ‘rightly
guided’ by Sunni Muslims. The word ‘Calif’ in Arabic means ‘successor.’ It refers to the person
who succeeds Muhammad is civil authority; no one is deemed to succeed him in religious
authority. Each of the four Rashidun Califs were early converts to Islam, were related to
Muhammad by marriage, were specifically named by Muhammad in hadith, ‘tradition,’ as being
in paradise, and were selected by a small group of Muslim leaders. The first, Abu Bakr, was and
early believer and the father of Aisha, reported to be Muhammad’s favorite wife. The second,
Umar, was named as the successor in Abu Bakr’s will. He was assassinated. The third, ‘Uthman,
was elected by a small group who chose him over ‘Ali. ‘Uthman was from an important family,
the ‘Umayyads, of the city of Medina. He moved he capital from Medina to Damascus where his
family held the governorship. He was assassinated. There is a hadith, accepted by both Shia and
Sunni Muslims that suggests that Muhammad had named ‘Ali as his successor. ‘Ali was married
to Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad and his first wife, Khadijah. ‘Ali became the fourth Calif
in the view of Sunni Muslims but the first legitimate one in the view of Shia Muslims. ‘Ali was
assassinated. Civil war followed and was won by Muawiyah, the Govenor of Syria and a relative
of ‘Uthman.
The Umayyad Califate began in Damascus in 661 CE. The Umayyad armies began what had begun
at the death of Muhammad as a reaction to tribal rebellions and continued through the defeat of
the Sassanid Iranian Empire in 640 CE, serious incursions into Byzantine territory in the east of
what is now Turkey, and west across north Africa and into all but the most northern parts of Spain.
The Abbasid Califate arose from a series of rebellions in Iraq against Umayyad authorities. The
Abbasids took the city of Kufa in Iraq in 749 CE and made it their capital. In 762 CE they began
construction of the city of Baghdad as their new capital. There was strong Iranian influence in the
government of the Abbasids and the Califs adopted the patronage of the sciences that had been
typical of Sassanid Iranian rulers.
Mathematics in West and Central Asia
Very little of Greek medical or mathematical knowledge moved through the monasteries. The
monks were interested in a very limited set of religious documents. Some medical and
mathematical knowledge was transmitted by Nestorian Christians who, having been banished, as
heretics, from Christendom, settled in areas of Iran that became dominated by Muslim rulers. Many
of the personal physicians to the Abbasid Califs were Syro-Persian Nestorians from Assyria.
Nestorian Christians translated Greek medical and mathematical texts from Greek to Syriac, their
liturgical language, and Muslim colleagues translated them from Syriac to Arabic at an institution
sponsored by the Abbasid Calif al-Ma’mūn (786-833 CE) in his capital of Baghdad. The institution
was known as the Bayt al-Hikma, ‘the house of wisdom.’ At the Bayt al-Hikma Greek
philosophical texts were also translated into Arabic and distributed throughout the Arabic speaking
world, including to Morocco and al-Andalus, Islamic Spain. The oldest continuously operating
university in the world is in Fez, Morocco. The libraries of al-Andalus were famous and Latin
scholars from Christian Europe traveled there, learned Arabic, and translated texts into Latin. The
first copy of Aristotle known in Christian Europe was a translation from the Arabic translation of
the Greek. Not until 1204 CE was a Greek version available in France, stolen by French knights
of the fourth crusade when they sacked Christian Constantinople.
Book production in the Arabic speaking world was prodigious. In 751 CE, near the city of Talas
in what is now in Kyrgyzstan, an Arabic army of the Abbasid Caliphate allied with an army of the
Tibetan Empire defeated an army of the Chinese Tang Empire thereby stopping the Tang
expansion to the west. The issue was control of the trade route that is now known as the Silk Road.
Among the Chinese prisoners of war were people who knew how to make paper, a much cheaper
material for books than parchment or vellum. The first paper production in Christian Europe was
about a half century after the first Arabic production.
The most sophisticated mathematical and astronomical achievements for which we have a record
come from central Asian sources; from cities along the silk road whose wealth sponsored
scholarship. Most of the writers of mathematical and medical texts were ethnic Iranians who were
Muslims and who wrote in Arabic. Calendrics, timekeeping, and geometry were very important in
Islam since practice requires prayers five times each day while facing Mecca. This became a major
problem in mathematical geography by the middle of the eighth century CE when Islam stretched
from Spain to Central Asia. Some of the foundation of Islamic mathematics was from Greek
writers but the most important contributions came from India where scholars such as al-Bīrūnī
went to study. In India al-Bīrūnī learned mathematical solution techniques that we would call
trigonometry.
The Calculation of the Length of a Degree of Latitude
Although there were others before Aristotle (384–322 BCE) who stated their belief that the earth
was a sphere, he offered the following proofs. Travelers going south observe the southern
constellations rise higher on the horizon. The shadow of the Earth on the Moon during an eclipse
is always round. Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE) was the head of the Museon, the library of
Alexandria. He had heard that at Syene, modern Aswan, there was a well in which on the Summer
Solstice the sun shone directly to the bottom with no shadow indicating that the sun was at the
zenith. On the same day in Alexandria the sun case a shadow. Using a scaphe, Eratosthenes
measured the angle of the sun’s shadow at Alexandria as a fiftieth of a circle. He believed
Alexandria to be due north of Syene and relied on the reports of camel caravaneers to estimate the
distance between the two locations. His unit of measure was the stade and it is not known which
of several stades he used. The accuracy of his measurement is not nearly as important as
recognizing the soundness of his method. Measuring the latitude of a location on the earth is easy.
One way is to measure the angle of elevation of Polaris, the north star. Since the apparent
movement of Polaris is actually a small circle, if one is very picky, one can also measure the
elevation of visually nearby stars in the constellation Cassiopeia to determine where on the circle
Polaris is. Because of refraction this is very difficult if one is at a latitude of less than about twenty
degrees.1 However, the Polaris observation is not easy without a theodolite. It is not easy to sight
without optics. Earlier astronomers used the sighting of the sun at local solar noon. They used a
quadrant and avoided looking at the sun by standing to the side of the quadrant and rotating it until
the front sighting point cast a shadow on the back sighting point. Angular measure has had a
consistent unit since the Babylonians established in the middle of the first millennium BCE. Their
counting system was base ten up to sixty and then base sixty for larger units. They divided the
circle into 360 degrees. The Calif al-Ma’mūn, around 830 CE, commissioned a group of surveyors
to measure the length of a degree. There are several descriptions of this survey with significant
discrepancies. The most reliable accounts suggest that the survey began in the desert near Sinjar
in Iraq. The desert here is very flat with elevations close to 400 m. over large distances. The sources
suggest that two survey teams started from a common origin with one moving north and one
moving south. Maintaining a north or south line is not difficult in a flat terrain. Bisecting the angle
between sunrise and sunset will provide the initial eastern vector that can be rotated by 90°. Al-
Bīrūnī reports from his sources that they measured distance with ropes that were fifty cubits (24.65
m.) long. He reports that they would lay out one rope and then place one end of the second rope at
the midpoint of the first and draw it out maintaining the alignment with the first. That way they
could maintain a straight line along the meridian. It is stated that they continued in this way until
they observed a one degree change in the altitude of the sun at local noon. This is of course possible
but unnecessary. One can traverse any distance and relate it to the proportional change in the
elevation of the sun. However, the longer the distance traversed, the more accurate the

1
At the site of el Ujuxte in Guatemala I was responsible for mapping. I decided to measure the elevation of Polaris
and one of the stars in Cassiopeia. I established a stake on a ground point on a mound and another on a pathway about
a hundred meters from the first. Well after full dark one crew went to the second point and lit lanterns to illuminate it.
With another crew I took the transit to the first point on the top of a mound. Polaris and Cassiopeia were barely visible
through the horizon haze only fifteen degrees above the horizon. The transit was not made for night work and sighting
a star involved alternating sighting the star without being able to see the crosshairs and seeing the crosshairs by shining
a flashlight through a side window into the transit; all this while dealing with a throng of mosquitoes. I recorded the
elevation and azimuth of Polaris, selected stars of Cassiopeia, and that of the second ground point. Later I calculated
the true north azimuth of the line between the two ground points. Ground truthing is never as easy as it sounds when
described in the report.
determination. There are several descriptions of the project and they do not agree in their report of
the result. Al-Bīrūnī was an ethnic Iranian born in 973 CE in a town in the western part of what
is now Uzbekistan. He spent a good deal of his life in a town in what in now central Afghanistan
and died there around 1050 CE. He traveled to India to study Hinduism and mathematics. Back in
Afghanistan he lived in an area where there was a single moderate mountain in the midst of a very
extensive and very flat plain. He used a mathematical technique, learned in India, that we would
call trigonometry to calculate the radius of the earth
Al-Bīrūnī wrote that he was held at the fort of Nandama in what is now northern Pakistan. He does
not state the reason but he does say that he noticed that the geography was appropriate for
measurements to determine the radius of the earth without the necessity of walking in the desert.
The mountain rises about 325 meters above a very flat plain. By measuring the angle of its summit
from two locations on the plain, a known distance apart, he was able to calculate the height. The
formula given below for calculating the height, H, of the mountain can be more conveniently
expressed using the cotangent function. However, it is likely that al-Bīrūnī’s quadrant would have
shown him the sine and cosine functions directly. There is no evidence that he used other
trigonometric functions. He then measured the deflection angle of the horizon from the summit of
the mountain. The instrument that he used is not known, however, it is known that he was familiar
with quadrants and astrolabes. His calculation of the radius of the earth was within one percent of
the current accepted value.

𝐷
𝐻=
𝑠𝑖𝑛𝐴 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝐴
(1/(cos𝐴 + ) − 1/(cos𝐴 1 )
+) 1)

ℎ sin(90 − 𝑑)
𝑅=
1 − sin(90 − 𝑑)

2
Mercier, p. 182
Bīrūnī’s Description of his Calculation of the Radius of the Earth

When in the country of India, I found a mountain

adjacent to a level faced plain. I first ascertained
its height at the sea-level. I then imagined the sight
line passing on its peak and connecting the earth
with the sky, that is, the horizon. I found through
my instrument that its horizon inclined form the
eastern and western lines a little less than ⅓ and ¼
degree. So I took the dip of the horizon as 34
minutes.3 I then ascertained the altitude of the
mountain by taking the heights of its peak I two
different places, both of which were in a line with
the bottom of the mountain’s perpendicular. I
found it 652 1/20 cubits4
Now the mountain’s perpendicular ‫ ھﺢ‬stands erect
on ‫اﺑﺢ‬, the earth’s sphere, we carry it straight down
to ‫ ﺣﻄﺐ‬which would necessarily pass through the
earth’s center ‫ ط‬on account of the attraction of the
heavy weights to it. Now the tangent touching the
earth from the peak of the mountain ‫ ه‬passing to the horizon is ‫ھﺎ‬. We join ‫ ط‬and ‫ ا‬and thus is
formed the right-angled triangle ‫ھﻄﺎ‬, of which the angle at ‫ ا‬is know to be the right angle, and the
values (of the other two angles) are also known, the angle ‫اھﻂ‬, being equal to the complementary
angle to the dip of the horizon having 89 degrees and 26 minutes with a sine of 0°, 59’, 59”, 49”’,
3
⅓ of a degree is 20’: ¼ of a degree is 15’; 20’ + 15’ = 35’. This statement suggests that al-Bīrūnī had two verniers
on his quadrant, one that divided degrees by thirds and one by fourths. Using the two together he had the equivalent
of a five minute of angle instrument from fifteen minutes to a degree.
4
1 zira, Arabian black cubit, equals 0.4933 m. 652 1/20 zira equals 321.6563 m.
2”” 5, and the angle ‫ ھﻄﺎ‬being equal to the dip of the horizon itself, that is, 34’, with a sine of 0°,
0’, 35”, 36”’.6 And thus this triangle will also be of known sides in the proportion in which ‫ طﮫ‬will
be sine 1 (i.e. 90 degrees) and ‫( طﺎ‬half chord) will be sine for the complementary angle to the dip
of the horizon. Therefore ‫ ھﺢ‬would be the excess in the sine 1 over the sine for the complementary
angle to the dip of the horizon and would come to 0p, 0’, 0”, 10’”, 57””, 32’””, and its ratio to ‫ طﺎ‬,
the sine for the complementary angle to the dip, would be the same as the ratio of the cubits of ‫ھﺢ‬
, the perpendicular of the mountain (i.e. 652 1/20 cubits) to the cubits of ‫ طﺎ‬, the radius of the earth.
In this manner the radius of the earth would be 12,851,369 cubits 50’ 42”7 and the circumference
80,780,039 cubits 59’ 50”.8, and a single one of the 360 degrees 224,388 cubits 59’ 50”.
The miles for a single degree would amount to 56p 0’ 50” 6’”.9
This result (of mine) comes very close to the finding of those people (i.e., Al-Mâmûn’s
astronomers). Nay, it actually corresponds with it, and so my mind was (at last) set at rest (and
satisfied) about their reports.
We have, however, used their measurement, as their instruments were more precise, and their
labour to obtain it of an extremely exacting and fastidious nature.
(Quoted from Bīrūnī, Al-Qānūn al-Mas’ūdiI in Barani Syed Hasan, ‘Muslim Researches in
Geodesy,’ in Al-Bīrūnī Commemoration Volume: A.H 362-A.H.1362, Iran Society, Calcutta, 1951.
pp 37f.)

5
0.999949228. Excel calculates the arcsine as 89°25’
6
0.009888889. Excel calculates the arcsine as 0°34’
7
6339580 m , 99.51% of R3, the volumetric radius of 6371000 m.
8
This implies that al-Bīrūnī used a value of 3.142857153 for Pi; in sexagesimal notation 3p, 8’, 34”, 8’”, 42””
9
56.01391667 in decimal notation.
The Book of Bodies and Distances10
(1) He said: The Commander of the Faithful al-Ma’mūn desired to know the size of the earth. He
inquired into this and found that Ptolemy mentioned in one of his books that the circumference of
the earth is such and such thousand stades. He asked the commentators about the interpretation of
stades, and they differed concerning its interpretation. (2) Since he was not informed of that which
he wished, he dispatched Khālid bin ‘abd al-Malik al-Marwazūdī, ‘Ali bin ‘Īsā al- Asturlābī, and
Ahmad ibn al-Buhtarī al-Dhāri‘ with a group of surveyors and some of the skilled artisans
including carpenters” and brassmakers, in order to repair the instruments which they would require,
and he transported them to a place which he chose in the desert of SijBn. (3) Thereupon Khālid
and his party headed towards the northern pole of the Banāt-Na‘sh11, and ‘Ali, Ahmad, and their
party headed in the direction of the southern pole. (4) They proceeded until they reached [the place]
where they found that the maximum noon altitude had increased, changing from the noon altitude
which they found in the place from which they had departed by the measure of one degree, after
they had subtracted from this the amount of declination of the sun during the period of travel on
their journey, and they planted arrows. Then they returned again to those arrows and checked the
measurement a second time. (5) They found the measure of one degree on the face of the earth to
be 56 miles, where the mile is 4000 “black” cubits, which is the cubit established by al-Ma’mūn as
the standard cubit [for] measuring cloth, buildings and dividing up houses. (6) I heard this which
I have reported in my book from Khālid bin ‘abd al-Malik al-Marwazūdī, who was telling it to the
qādī Yahyā bin Aktham. Yahyā ordered that all that which Khālid reported be written down for
him, and so it was written. I wrote it, hearing [it] from Khālid.
Langermann, Tzvi, “The Book of Bodies and Distances of Habash al Hāsib, Centarus, July 1985,
p122.
\

10
Ban Langermann, Tzvi, “The Book of Bodies and Distances of Habash al Hāsib, Centarus, July 1985, p122.
11
The Banāt-Na‘sh, ‘daughters of the bier,’ are the three stars of the handle of the Big Dipper and he four stars of the
bowl are the bier.