(circa 858 – 929 AD)
Known to Euro-admirers as “Albategnius”, Muhammad ibn-Jabir ibn-Sinan al-Battani was an astro-supremo. Although preeminent during the Islamic Golden Age, he remains amongst the greatest and most influential astronomers. Apart from refining old tools such as sundials, astrolabes and armillary spheres, he introduced new practices (and methodologies) which helped his contemporaries and successors resolve many intricate problems. For example, by introducing the Trigonometric Functions (“sines” and “tangents”) to astronomy, al-Battani effectively supplanted the unwieldy and error-prone Greek methods. He also used trig techniques to derive the Qibla Equation which enable Muslims determine the appropriate cardinal direction to use for salat. In addition to improving his predecessors’ works on eclipses, equinoxes, obliquities and planetary trajectories, his calculation of calendar year as 365 days 5 hours 46 minutes and 24 seconds remains impressive (even by today’s standards of 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 45.6 seconds). Christopher Clavius would rely markedly on al-Battani’s Kitāb az-Zīj aṣ-Ṣābi’, charts, catalogues and other data (about 650 years after his death) while amending the antiquated Julian calendar: vis-à-vis our contemporary Gregorian. Likewise, his magisterial yields in maps, sketches, tabulations and other elements of mathematical astronomy nourished Nicolaus Copernicus’ mind: amidst his geocentric-heliocentric vacillatory tussles. Al-Battani’s works ushered-in such knowhows and revolutions that succeeding Euro-astronomers (including: Regiomontanus, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Giovanni-Battista Riccioli) sang him praises over half-a-millennium after his death. Abu Rayhan Al-Biruni, one of his medieval successors, also elucidated him. Al-Battani’s fame endures in proses, odes, monuments and commemoratives. The 129-kilometer-wide Albategnius lunar crater is dedicated to him.
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A scientific warrior
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