Maragha Observatory

The observatory at Maragha, in Azerbaijan, was founded by the Mongol ruler Hulagu at the suggestion of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. The Encyclopaedia of Islam calls it the first large-scale Islamic observatory whose organisation and structure we know in detail. ¹ It was built on a hill near the town and had several buildings, among them a residence for Hulagu, a mosque and a rich library. The article adds that the sources speak of 400,000 volumes, which it calls a traditional figure rather than a count. ¹ The article on al-Tusi calls it one of the most ambitious scientific institutions established up to that time, with a large library and a school, and says that despite lasting only about fifty years its intellectual legacy had repercussions from China to Europe for centuries. ²

After the taking of Baghdad in 656/1258, Hulagu took up quarters in Maragha and ordered an observatory built from the plans of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. The article on Maragha, citing Rashid al-Din, says Tusi had four astronomers as advisers, one of them Fakhr al-Din, a native of Maragha. ³ The article on the observatory dates the foundation to 657/1259. ¹ Hulagu's motives, it says, seem to have been astrological. ¹ The article on al-Tusi describes Tusi as court astrologer and as director of religious endowments under Hulagu, who oversaw the construction of the observatory and its instruments and became its first director. ²

The article on observatories also preserves a story about the negotiations. A programme of planetary observations needs at least thirty years, the period of a revolution of Saturn, an idea it traces back to the observatory of Malik Shah in the eleventh century. Tusi is said to have recalled this minimum in his talks with Hulagu, and, meeting resistance from the ruler, to have agreed to complete the same work in twelve years, the period of Jupiter. ¹

The observatory stood on a fortified hill to the west of the town. According to the article on Maragha, only traces of the foundations of the walls were still to be seen, and Schindler's plan of 1883 gave the levelled area of the hill as 137 by 347 metres. ³ On the south side of the hill there are rock-cut chambers, three rooms about twelve feet high, joined to each other and to a corridor, with niches in the shape of altars. Local tradition takes them for a church, perhaps of the Sasanian period; the article reports this without deciding. ⁴ The article lists, among older studies of the instruments, a French translation of an Arabic treatise attributed to Tusi's colleague Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi, published in 1809. ³

The observatory was financed from the revenues of pious endowments, awqaf. The article on observatories stresses that this was the first time an observatory was supported in the way normally reserved for schools, hospitals and libraries. ¹ The library grew, according to the article on al-Tusi, because Hulagu had begun to carry off the stores of libraries in Mesopotamia, Baghdad and Syria. Many scholars are said to have come to Maragha, among them the Syriac scholar Bar Hebraeus, Fakhr al-Din al-Maraghi, Ibn al-Fuwati, Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi and Muhyi al-Din al-Maghribi. ⁵ The article on al-Tusi adds that it attracted many famous and talented scientists and students, including, it is reported, Chinese astronomers. ²

The observatory article names among the astronomers who worked there, besides Tusi and al-'Urdi, Muhyi al-Din al-Maghribi, who died between 680 and 690/1281-91, and Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi, who lived from 634 to 710/1236-1311. It notes that al-'Urdi had already made important modifications to the Ptolemaic system before the observatory's foundation. ¹ The article on al-Tusi adds that Qutb al-Din, who wrote the best-known commentary on Tusi's Tadhkira, is missing from the biographers' lists of those who came to Maragha, and that he is said to have criticised Tusi and denounced him to Hulagu. ⁵

By Tusi's death in 672/1274 the Zij-i Ilkhani was already complete. The observatory article treats these astronomical tables as the basic result of the work at Maragha, and says the observations lasted more than twelve years and were pursued after Tusi's death to the end of the thirty-year period of Saturn. New observations of about 672-703/1274-1304 led to some corrections of the Zij. ¹ The article on al-Tusi gives a more cautious reading: it describes the Zij, written in Persian for his Mongol patrons, as probably compiled in haste, and says it seems not to have incorporated the Maragha observations, although it was nevertheless widely used. ² The two articles are therefore not in full agreement on how the Zij relates to the observatory's observing programme, and the museum records both. Tusi is said to have left Maragha shortly before his death with many pupils and followers and to have gone to Baghdad. ⁵

The observatory outlived its founder. In 703/1304 the Ilkhan Oljeytu received ambassadors of the Great Khan of China at Maragha and installed Tusi's son at the observatory. ³ The observatory article says there seems to have been some activity until about 715/1316, and that the building was in ruins in 740/1339. It was thus the first Islamic observatory with notable longevity, 55 or 60 years, and it gave birth both to Tusi's Zij and to the Zij of Muhyi al-Din al-Maghribi. ¹

Maragha served as a model for imitations. One, the observatory of Sham, a suburb of Tabriz, was built by the Ilkhan Ghazan and lasted about fifteen or sixteen years, from about 701 to 717/1300-17. The article says no observatory of Maragha's size appeared again until the Samarkand observatory of Ulugh Beg, founded in 823/1420. ¹

The articles give no plan of the buildings and no list of the instruments, and the figure of 400,000 volumes is a traditional one. The museum's record gives no coordinates beyond those of the town.