Orateur
Juan Acevedo
(CIUHCT, Faculty of Science ERC Project RUTTER University of Lisbon)
Description
The celestial navigation skills of early modern Arab pilots in the Indian Ocean are as legendary as vaguely and partially known. In this talk I will draw directly from the two known late medieval sources, Ahmad ibn Mājid and particularly Sulaymān al-Mahrī —who remains mostly untranslated— to paint a fuller picture, including their astronomical framework, the techniques they used and their relation to scholarly astronomy. Working on an initial question, “What could be tabulated from their works?”, I expect to be able to delineate with some precision their craft, and so to furnish interested astronomers with clear elements for comparison and reflection.
