Observatories · a Light

Letters home from Samarkand describe how an observatory ran

Two letters written by Jamshid al-Kashi to his father in Kashan survive from the 1420s, and they are the closest thing anyone has to an eyewitness account of a great observatory at work. Al-Kashi describes the staff at Ulugh Beg's institution in Samarkand, dozens of scholars with the ruler himself among the working astronomers, and reports that Ulugh Beg could carry long calculations in his head. He is blunt about colleagues he thought incompetent. He also admits that he had no manners at court and that Ulugh Beg overlooked it. The observatory was attached to a madrasa where astronomy and mathematics were taught, so the staff trained their own replacements, and one of those students, Ali Qushji, later carried the work west to Istanbul.

Al-Kashi at Ulugh Beg's court · 1420s