Biography of Al-Battani
Ivy Diash Mahinda (14/X MIPA 4 Semester)
AL-BATTANI
Al-Battani is one of the famous Muslim scholars of mathematics and planetary studies. He was born in the age known as the Golden Age of Islam. He is regarded as one of the greatest astronomers in the entire tradition of the Islamic world. With his deep interest in trigonometry – the branch of math that deals with three sides and three angles, he found relations between trigonometric signs like sine, cosine, and tangent. This led him to determine the changing position of the Sun, Moon, night and, day in a year.
Thanks to Al-Battani's discovery, today we can know that in a
year there are 365 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes and 24 seconds
Al-Battani (Latin Albatenius, Albategnus, or Albategni), born c. 858, in or near Harran, near Urfa, Syria. His full name was “Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Jabir Ibn Sinān Al-Battani Al-ḥarrānī As-ṣābiʾ”. Arab astronomer and mathematician who refined existing values for the length of the year and of the seasons, for the annual precession of the equinoxes, and for the inclination of the ecliptic. He was a native of Harran, in what is now Turkey, southeast of the modern city of Urfa. At the time, the area was part of the Mesopotamian lands whose cultural and administrative center was Baghdad. His
family is known to have been Sabian (a group of people who worshiped stars). But
he was a Muslim and believed in only one God. His father was famous for
designing scientific instruments. This skill of his father helped him to develop
instruments used for working on stars and planets. Besides, his intelligence in
trigonometry also helped him to know the relation between sides and angles of a
triangle. He was a brilliant observer of solar and lunar eclipses (events when
either Moon or Earth receive a shadow). Al–Battani was active as an astronomer until about the year 918. Al-Battani spent around forty years in
Raqqah, a city of Central Syria, where he made vast contributions to science. He
also wrote a book on planetary tables known as Kitab Al-Zig. This book was later
on used by many known scholars like Nasir Al-Din Tusi, John Kepler, and Nicolaus
Copernicus for research on astronomy and trigonometry. He paved the way for
other scholars to work in the future to discover unknown concepts like orbits in
space. In the year 929 he accompanied a group of townspeople from al–Raqqa, who may have included some of his own descendants, to Baghdad as part of what was likely a tax protest. The aging astronomer survived to plead his cause but died on the journey home at Qasr al–Jiss, near the present–day Iraqi city of Samarra. So, Al-Battani moved to Al-Samara and then died in 929 AD at near Sāmarrāʾ, Iraq. After his death, al–Battani's influence was magnified. The praise of the bookseller Ibn an–Nadim cited above attests to his fame in the Arab world. During the later medieval era in Europe, Western scholars turned to the Islamic world as they attempted to reconstruct the foundations of sciences that had been buried since the decline of the Roman empire centuries before.
Among the various contributions of Al-Battani, few are given below. Apart from
them he also discovered, observed and recorded 489 stars. Besides, he also
showed the farthest distance of the Sun from Earth known as ‘apogee’. Al-Battani
determined the solar year, changes in seasons, days and nights due to the
revolution of the Sun around the Earth in a year, and he also identified a
certain number of stars that were not known before. He found and named new
stars. Ptolemy’s work on the sun’s farthest point was more accurately confirmed
by him. Al-Battānī was the best known of Arab astronomers in Europe during the Middle Ages. His principal written work, a compendium of astronomical tables, was translated into Latin in about 1116 and into Spanish in the 13th century. A printed edition, under the title De motu stellarum (“On Stellar Motion”), was published in 1537.
- Al-Battani was the first to determine that the solar year is equal to 365 days with an additional 5 hours, 46 minutes and 24 seconds. This figure of the solar year is in accordance with modern science’s calculation of the solar year.
- He was first to know and explain the concept of Equinoxes. Equinoxes are times when the Sun is over the line at the middle point of Earth when the length of day and night becomes equal.
- His works on the Sun, Moon, and their yearly changing positions made him arrange the Islamic Lunar Calendar – a calendar based on the monthly changing position of the Moon.
FACTS ABOUT AL-BATTANI
- Al-Battani’s expertise on trigonometry made him earn the title of ‘Ptolemy of the Arabs’.
- His book Kitab Al-Zig extended and even corrected most of the planetary calculations made by Ptolemy. Moreover, he added tables of planets in his book that John Kepler used in his works on planetary motions a few centuries later.
- Al-Battani determined the relation between trigonometric terms and expressed them in equations like secant, cosecant, tangent, and cotangent.
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