Astronomy · a Light

Istanbul's observatory was built in 1577 and demolished in 1580

Taqi al-Din, an astronomer from Damascus who had become chief astronomer to the Ottoman court, was given money by Sultan Murad III to build an observatory in Galata. It was finished in 1577, with a staff of about fifteen and instruments comparable to those Tycho Brahe was using in Denmark in the same years. Taqi al-Din observed the great comet of that autumn and read it as favourable. What followed was plague and a costly war. In January 1580 the observatory was demolished by order, after the chief mufti gave an opinion against it. Historians who have worked on the episode read the destruction as a court quarrel as much as a religious one, but the instruments went all the same.

Galata, Istanbul · 1577 to 1580