Absract of Al-Battani

On 04 June of 2005 I attended the Association of Muslim Social Scientists 4th Regional Conference at Southern Methodist University. I attended with the recommendation of a scholar from Chicago. AMSS was founded in 1972 as a means to preserve the Islamic intellectual heritage.

The conference presentation was, “Islamic Medieval Scholars and Their Impact on the West.” It was a delightful event, with Dr. John Esposito as one of the keynote speakers. Equally fascinating was the cadre of Muslim men who either assisted in chairing the event or gave presentations on various topics. Men such as Dr. Nazeer Ahmed (a Chief Engineer for the Hubble Space Telescope) and Dr. Ibrahim Syed, Ph.D, D.Sc., FACR come to mind. Also in attendance was an area cardiologist with whom I had worked in the past within an ICU environment at an area hospital . Dr. Yusuf Kavakci, a noted Turkish scholar and a former Pakistani ambassador were present. And then of course, scraping the shallow end of the gene pool, people such as “moi”, an Islamic social science intellectual midget.

I have been away from my Islamic studies for approximately six weeks and am just moving back into research. This necessitates looking at the disaster zone which I lovingly call my personal library and culling through files. Finding the booklet attached to the AMSS event has given a few pleasant moments of reading today. So let me bring another blog on Islamic Distance Learning and introduce you to a famous Muslim scientific mind. Let’s take a peek at the life of Al-Battani a noted astronomer and mathematician.

Al-Battani was born in 858 A.D. in Harran, Turkey but later moved to Raqqa, situated along the banks of the Euphrates river. In his forties he relocated to Samarra, where his research and life work continued until his death in 929 A.D. The contributions he made to the scientific world include the following:

*He rectified several orbits of the moon and the planets and his observations of lunar and solar eclipses were used by Dunthorne in 1749 to determine the secular acceleration of motion of the moon.

*Al-Battani introduced the use of orthographic projection for resolution of spherical trigonometry problems.

*He was the first to replace the use of Greek chord sines and developed the concept of cotangent and furnished their table in degrees.

*His book “Zij” was translated into Latin in the 12th century as De scienta stellerum – De numeris stellerum et motibus with an old translation retained by the Vatican. This is a famous book on astronomical treatise. His work was extremely influential in Europe up until the Renaissance, with translations available in several languages.

The AMSS conference was well-attended and a luncheon was prepared by area Muslim women. Delicious! Haven’t a clue what I was eating beyond the serving of rice, but I tried it all. The one downside to the conference was the one rabble-rousing attendee who came armed with his one Jihad ayat from the Qur’an and his slingshot in hand to take a pot-shot at a Ph.D. scholar who had more activated brain cells than the majority of us in attendance. Read my lips. Don’t attend any event merely to be the intentional jack-ass. Stay at home and bray at home.

But back to Al-Battani. I am grateful for men who have been given the gift of intellect, reasoning and the necessary curiosity to figure out how things work. As for me, I merely flip the light switch and expect the wires in my house to perform in more intricate manner than the few wires in my own brain. smile Should you ever have opportunity to attend an AMSS conference in your area it is worth the fee.

Tammy Swofford

tammyswofford@yahoo.com