Observatories · a Light

Maragha was an observatory with a budget and a staff

In 1259 Nasir al-Din al-Tusi began building an observatory at Maragha, in what is now northwest Iran, with Hulagu's backing and, more usefully, a share of endowment income assigned to it so that it did not depend on one ruler's mood. That was the new thing. Earlier observatories had been the project of a single astronomer and closed when he died or lost his patron. Maragha had a director, a library, a workshop, salaried staff drawn from Damascus to Andalusia, and a Chinese astronomer named in the sources. Its instruments were designed by Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Urdi. The tables it produced, the Zij-i Ilkhani, were finished in 1272 and used for centuries. The pattern it set, a funded institution outliving its founder, was copied at Samarkand and Istanbul.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi · Maragha, from 1259