Academic literature on the topic 'Samarkand observatory'

The Ulugh Beg Madrasah in Samarkand is a prominent scientific and educational institution of Central Asia. The construction of the madrasah was initiated in the 15th century by Ulugh Beg, the Timurid ruler and astronomer. The madrasah played a great role in the development of astronomy, mathematics, and Islamic studies. This article discusses the historical significance, architectural elegance, and astronomical contributions of the madrasah by virtue of its association with the Ulugh Beg Observatory. The study sheds light on Ulugh Beg's laborious efforts at star cataloging and how his mathematical advancements influenced Islamic and European astronomical traditions. The article also discusses the madrasah's role in pedagogy and the spread of scientific knowledge in the medieval Islamic world. By exploring its role as an intellectual hub, this research emphasizes the lasting influence of Ulugh Beg Madrasah on the scientific thought of its time and after.

Occultism remains the largest blind spot in the historiography of Islamicate philosophy-science, a casualty of persistent scholarly positivism, even whiggish triumphalism. Such occultophobia notwithstanding, the present article conducts a survey of the Islamicate encyclopedic tradition from the 4th–11th/10th–17th centuries, with emphasis on Persian classifications of the sciences, to demonstrate the ascent to philosophically mainstream status of various occult sciences (ʿulūm ġarība) throughout the post-Mongol Persianate world. Most significantly, in Persian encyclopedias, but not in Arabic, and beginning with Faḫr al-Dīn Rāzī, certain occult sciences (astrology, lettrism and geomancy) were gradually but definitively shifted from the natural to the mathematical sciences as a means of reasserting their scientific legitimacy in the face of four centuries of anti-occultist polemic, from Ibn Sīnā to Ibn Ḫaldūn; they were simultaneously reclassified as the sciences of walāya, moreover, which alone explains the massive increase in patronage of professional occultists at the Safavid, Mughal and Ottoman courts in the runup to the Islamic millennium (1592 CE). I argue that the mathematicalization, neopythagoreanization and sanctification of occultism in Ilkhanid-Timurid-Aqquyunlu Iran is the immediate intellectual and sociopolitical context for both the celebrated mathematization of astronomy by the members of the Samarkand Observatory in the 9th/15th century and the resurgence of neoplatonic-neopythagorean philosophy in Safavid Iran in the 10th/16th and 11th/17th, whereby Ibn Sīnā himself was transformed into a neopythagorean-occultist—processes which have heretofore been studied in atomistic isolation.

After Uzbekistan gained independence, the study and restoration of the spiritual and material heritage of great thinkers became relevant and important, causing such feelings as interest and development in science. In particular, it is important to study the life and work of the ruler and scientist Mirzo Ulugbek, to understand his contribution to the development of world science. This article is about the scientific activity of the scientist and ruler Mirzo Ulugbek, madrasas, observatories, socio-philosophical analysis of the scientific heritage of scientists, features of the development of socio-political and cultural-philosophical thinking of the people of Central Asia in the 15th-16th centuries, evolution, historical and philosophical foundations.

This article gives the information about the art and culture of the Timurids, which left an indelible mark in world history and is considered the golden age. It is stated that the rise of Movorounnahr and Khorasan from the second half of the 13th century to the end of the 18th century determined not only the cultural and spiritual development of Central Asia, but also influenced the cultural life of India, Afghanistan, Iran and European countries.