40. Ulugh Beg
(796-853H/1393-1449AD)

Ulugh Beg Muhammed Targai Ibn Shah Rakh Ibn Timur was born in 796 H/1393 AD in Sultaniyeh, in Asia Minor. He grew up as a prince as his father was reigning on many countries and large regions.

Before the age of 20, his father appointed him Emir on Turkistan and Transoxania. He made of Samarkand his capital and a center of Islamic civilization. During his long reign that lasted nearly 40 years, he rendered great services to science and arts(240).

Scientific Contributions

He devised many new astronomical instruments that helped astronomers in their researches. L. Bouvat says on this point : “In his work with astronomers, he succeeded in creating new powerful instruments, capable of helping them in their researches.” He also worked on trigonometry, and his co sinus and sinus tables helped a great deal in the progress of science. He was also concerned by other branches of mathematics, especially geometry and came up with solutions to some of its complicated issues(241).

He built in Samarkand an observatory and equipped it with engines and instruments known at the time. This observatory “was considered at the time as one of the wonders of the world”(242). He summoned in this observatory many great astronomers and mathematicians, such as “Kadi Zadah Rumi” and “Mu’in ed-Din al-Kachani” and others, with whom he undertook (from 827 to 839 H) to correct the Greek astronomical observations.

Ulugh Beg was not only a scientist in astronomy, observation and mathematics. He was also involved in literature, a historian and a jurisprudent. He studied the Qur’an, learned it by heart and recited it in the Seven Readings(243).

Major Works

- “Zij Ulugh Beg” (Ulugh Beg Astronomical Table). He included in this book the results of twelve years of observation. It contains practical ways to calculate the solar and lunar eclipses, tables of stationary stars, the movement of the sun, the moon and the planets, and the latitudes and longitudes of big cities throughout the world(244). There is a discord over the language in which this treatise was written, whether in Arabic, Persian or Turkish(245).

This book was first printed in London in 1650 AD. It was translated afterwards into European languages. Sidue translated the introduction into French and published it in Paris in 1847 and 1853 in two volumes. In 1419/1998, Fuad Sizekin, in cooperation with a group of researchers, assembled and reprinted all Ulugh Beg’s astronomical works in German.