Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf

astronomer and inventor

Date of Birth: 14-Jun-1526

Place of Birth: Damascus, Damascus Governorate, Syria

Date of Death: 01-Jan-0001

Profession: astronomer, engineer, pharmacist, astrologer, mathematician, inventor

Nationality: Syria

Zodiac Sign: Gemini


Show Famous Birthdays Today, Syria

👉 Worldwide Celebrity Birthdays Today

About Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf

  • Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf ash-Shami al-Asadi (Arabic: ??? ????? ???? ?? ????? ???????, Ottoman Turkish: ??? ????? ???? ?? ????? ?????? ???????) was an Ottoman polymath active in Cairo and Istanbul.
  • He was the author of more than ninety books on a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, clocks, engineering, mathematics, mechanics, optics and natural philosophy. In 1574 the Ottoman Sultan Murad III invited Taqi ad-Din to build the Constantinople observatory.
  • Using his exceptional knowledge in the mechanical arts, Taqi ad-Din constructed instruments like huge armillary and mechanical clocks that he used in his observations of the Great Comet of 1577.
  • He also used European celestial and terrestrial globes that were delivered to Istanbul in gift-exchange.
  • The major work that resulted from his work in the observatory is titled "The tree of ultimate knowledge [in the end of time or the world] in the Kingdom of the Revolving Spheres: The astronomical tables of the King of Kings [Murad III]" (Sidrat al-muntah al-afkar fi malkut al-falak al-dawar– al-zij al-Shahinshahi).
  • The work was prepared according to the results of the observations carried out in Egypt and Istanbul in order to correct and complete Ulugh Beg’s Zij as-Sultani.
  • The first 40 pages of the work deal with calculations, followed by discussions of astronomical clocks, heavenly circles, and information about three eclipses which he observed at Cairo and Istanbul.
  • For corroborating data of other observations of eclipses in other locales like Daud ar-Riyyadi (David the Mathematician), David Ben-Shushan of Salonika. As a polymath, Taqi al-Din wrote numerous books on astronomy, mathematics, mechanics, and theology.
  • His method of finding coordinates of stars were reportedly so precise that he got better measurements than his contemporaries, Tycho Brahe and Nicolas Copernicus.
  • Brahe is also thought to have been aware of al-Din's work. Taqi Ad-Din also described a steam turbine with the practical application of rotating a spit in 1551.
  • He worked on and created astronomical clocks for his observatory.
  • Taqi Ad-Din also wrote a book on optics, in which he determined the light emitted from objects, proved the Law of Reflection observationally, and worked on refraction.

Read more at Wikipedia

See Also