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The Safavid World
Rudi Matthee
The mathematical sciences and medicine in Safavid Iran
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Sonja Brentjes
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
T H E M AT H E M AT I C A L S C I E N C E S
A N D M E D I C I N E I N S A FAV I D I R A N
•••
Sonja Brentjes
INTRODUCTION
Evaluating the mathematical sciences and medicine during the period of the Safavid
dynasty is very difficult since very little research has been done in these areas.
Since the nineteenth century, when Ferdinand Nesselmann (1811–81) published
and translated in 1842 Bahā al-Din al-‘Āmeli’s (953–1031/1547–1622) elementary
survey on arithmetic, algebra and geometrical figures, Kholāsat al-hesāb, the Safavid
period has been considered one of scientific decline and stagnation. This view has
not changed very much over the almost 180 years that have passed since. David
King’s discovery of a Mecca-centered world map on three Safavid astrolabes sold
at the art market between 1985 and 2001, and George Saliba’s detection of new
models for planetary movements in Shams al-Din al-Khafri’s (d. 957/1550) writings
modified it to some extent. King highlighted in several works the artful products of
Safavid astrolabe makers. Nonetheless, he is strongly convinced that the projection
used for constructing the world maps could not have been invented either by the
Safavid craftsmen or scholars but had to come from a scholar of the third/ninth or
fourth/tenth century, when the mathematical sciences flourished in Baghdad and
other cities of Iraq, Iran and Central Asia.1 Saliba, by contrast, celebrated Khafri’s
contributions to planetary theory as proof against the decline of intellectual vigor
at least in astronomy.2 He did not, however, evaluate the relationship between
Khafri’s work and the rise of the new dynasty. No further significant studies of the
mathematical sciences have appeared since then. A detailed survey of manuscripts,
colophons, dedications, illustrations and thus geographies, politics, and the arts of
Safavid mathematical manuscripts is found in Brentjes, 2010.
The situation with regard to medicine is somewhat different. Although there are no
editions of medical or pharmaceutical texts written by Safavid scholars and no sys-
tematic study of medicine in whatever function (discourse, practice, institutions and
people) throughout the two centuries, Andrew Newman’s articles on Mohammad
Bāqer Majlesi (d. 1110/1699) and his engagement with theoretical as well as pro-
phetic medicine have explored important contextual features of medical activities
428
— T h e m a t h e m a t i c a l s c i e n c e s a n d m e d i c i n e —
during the second half of the seventeenth century.3 Speziale’s analysis of the Resāla
al-zahabiyya, a medical treatise (falsely) attributed to the eighth Twelver Shi‘i Imam
‘Ali al-Rezā (770–818) and the foundational charter of the Shi‘i version of prophetic
medicine, i.e., the medicine of the imams, adds further information about this med-
ical discourse during the reign of Shāh ‘Abbās II (1642–66).4
The present text cannot compensate for these gaps in research and publication.
It will offer some general impressions about the state of these disciplines and their
practitioners in tenth/sixteenth- and eleventh/seventeenth-century Iran based pri-
marily on investigations of the manuscripts collected in Iran and the publications of
the aforementioned colleagues.
The mathematical sciences and medicine were the two scholarly domains outside
the religious disciplines, which had a professional representation at the court and
market place. The professional representative of the mathematical sciences was the
astrologer. The highest-ranking member of this profession was the head astrologer at
court, the monajjem-bāshi, responsible for preparing horoscopes of the shah and his
family and for determining auspicious days or hours for travel, war, or the enthrone-
ment of a new ruler. The profession’s lowest-ranking members were those who sold
their predictions in small shops at the market or as itinerary salesmen of goods or
hopes. While quite a few court astrologers are known by name, those who populated
the markets or streets are only known to have existed. We do not know what they
knew and what they sold. It seems reasonable to assume that they were not specialized
in astrological predictions alone but also sold talismans, incantations, magic bowls
or cloth, calendars or almanacs and perhaps even drugs. If that is a correct suppos-
ition, then these lowly astrologers relied on the occult sciences, discussed in another
chapter of this book, and may have served as healers or at least shared some of the
tasks with those who sold drugs, syrups and other medical drinks, or treated wounds
and broken bones. This chapter will, however, focus on men who wrote texts and
produced instruments, because these are the documents of their learning and profes-
sional practice that they left behind and that we can study.
The highest-ranking representative of the medical field was – as in the case of
astrology – the head physician at court, the hakim-bāshi. Here too, we know some
of these men by name. Court astrologers and court physicians were not only skilled
in their professional domains. As a rule, they would have had a good education in
the religious disciplines, in particular, the Qur’ān’ and its interpretations, Shi‘i hadith
and law but possibly also in kalām as well as in poetry, history and calligraphy. Shāh
‘Abbās’s I court physician Sharaf al-Din Hasan al-Shefā‘i (d. 1037/1628), himself
the son of a court physician, is more famous for his satirical poetry and his post-
humous portrait allegedly painted by Rezā ‘Abbāsi in 1634 and copied repeatedly,
among others by his most famous student Mo’in Musavver in 1675, than for his
medical talent and writings.5 This is primarily the result of a lack of solid inves-
tigation of his as well as other medical texts of the Safavid period. In addition,
Sharaf al-Din was also an expert in diplomatic letter writing.6 Shāh ‘Abbās’s I court
astrologer Jalāl al-Din Mohammad b. ‘Abd Allāh Yazdi (d. 1029/1619) wrote a his-
tory of the shah’s rule.7 His son and grandson also served the court in both capaci-
ties as astrologers and historians.8 This inclusion of astrologers and physicians in
the administrative bureaucracy of a Muslim dynasty, the Safavids shared with the
Ottomans and possibly also the Mughals. Whether this is a mere accident or speaks
429
— S o n j a B r e n t j e s —
of more substantive similarities in the bureaucratic and professional organization of

these empires’ administration needs to be investigated.
The madrasa was the third cultural space where men with interests in the math-
ematical sciences were at home. Whether this also applies to medicine is difficult
to ascertain. Although no specialized teaching chairs existed for either of the two
domains, numerous mathematical texts are extant that were copied and studied at
madrasas in Shiraz, Isfahan and other cities.9 Many well-known religious scholars
authored such texts. This does not seem to be the case for medicine. If indeed some
Safavid religious scholars also wrote about medical subjects, their engagement
with the field as a group was recognizably weaker than that with the mathemat-
ical sciences. Thus, it is safe to say that the mathematical sciences, which consisted
of the four ancient quadrivial sciences, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and the-
oretical music as well as several so-called branches such as algebra, magic squares,
different systems of calculation, the movement of heavy bodies and probably also
optics, were part of madrasa training, even if their teaching focused on individual
texts and not on providing a basic training of the complete set of disciplines and
subdisciplines. Because of the integration of geographical material into the litera-
ture of astronomical handbooks (Zij), parts of geography had been taught in earlier
periods within the restructured field of astronomy, called ‘elm al-hay’a (the science
of configuration, often translated as mathematical cosmography). Although only
one such handbook seems to have been compiled by a Safavid author, most Safavid
astrologers and several of the religious scholars writing about prayer times, prayer
directions and related subjects worked with the two most respected handbooks of
the Ilkhanid and Timurid dynasties – the Zij-e ilkhāni and the Zij-e Gorgāni. These
two handbooks are usually known as having been authored by Nasir al-Din Tusi
(597–672/1201–74) and the Timurid sultan Ologh Beg (d. 852/1449), respectively;
although, in fact, each one of them was compiled by several scholars. No such col-
lective works are known from the Safavid period, despite two stories about royal
intentions in the tenth/sixteenth century to rebuild the observatory in Maragha or
to construct a new one. However, manuscript libraries in Iran hold numerous astro-
nomical and astrological tables copied or recalculated by Safavid scholars. Thus,
astrologers obviously found ways to circumvent the lack of observatories.
Due to the lack of systematic research, it is not possible to evaluate the range
of topics, texts and authors that the mathematical education at madrasas offered.
Below, I will describe some of them as far as they are traceable through catalogs and
digitized manuscript collections. Moreover, the madrasa system consisted of many
very small institutions with one appointed teacher only. A few larger schools had a
greater number but still fewer than ten teachers. There was no upper-level organ-
izing institution responsible for setting a curriculum and choosing textbooks. As a
whole, this system favored informality and multidisciplinarity overspecialization.
Most madrasa scholars were teachers of the religious sciences. They rarely read and
taught more than a very small number of mathematical texts. Nonetheless, judging
by the dated and signed manuscripts from the Safavid period, these sciences occu-
pied a stable place at Safavid madrasas.
In contrast, medical teaching at Safavid madrasas is very difficult to trace. The
existence of medical families running over a few generations suggests that medical
knowledge continued to be transmitted like a craft from father or uncle to son or
430
nephew. Historians of the Safavid period such as Eskandar Beg Monshi (d. ca. 1632)
confirm the training of sons by their fathers in medical theory as well as the pharma-
ceutical and therapeutic crafts.10 Such inner-family education also took place for the
mathematical, religious and philological disciplines. As already indicated for Jalāl
al-Din Yazdi, one of Shāh ‘Abbās’ I head astrologers, the Safavid period also saw
several multi-generational families of astrologers.
MAJOR MATHEMATICAL TEXTBOOKS

Most extant Arabic and Persian texts on one or more of the mathematical sciences
were written by madrasa teachers or copied by their students. Their content is elem-
entary. They served as introductory surveys of the basic rules, concepts and objects
of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, constructions of astrolabes or calendars, the deter-
mination of the qebla, the structure of the universe, models of planetary movements
and astrological techniques. Higher-level texts are rare as far as we know today. But
many manuscripts have not yet been studied. Hence, this judgment is based on my
own, admittedly limited experience with a few hundred manuscripts and manuscript
descriptions.
Teaching the mathematical sciences at madrasas involved primarily arithmetic,
algebra, geometry and astronomy. Family-based training also included astrology.
Whether astrology was also taught at some Safavid madrasas and if so what parts
were taught, how often and at which level is difficult to gauge. The knowledge
covered in classes on arithmetics consisted of the four basic operations of addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division for positive integers and fractions plus the
extraction of mostly square and cubic roots. Since two of the main books used
in Timurid as well as Ottoman arithmetic classes were Nezām al-Din Nisāburi’s
(668–728 or 730/1270–1328 or 1330) al-Shamsiyya fi’l-hesāb and Gheyās al-Din
Kāshi’s (d. 832/1429) Meftāh al-hesāb (or: al-hossāb), it is possible that higher root
extractions and operations with higher powers than cubes as well as fractions of
such powers were also taught at Safavid madrasas. Verification of major manu-
script collections in Tehran, Mashhad, or Qom seems to support such a conclusion.
Nonetheless, this supposition needs to be approached with caution since except for
Mashhad all these collections are the product of twentieth-century efforts. They do
not reflect libraries organically grown over centuries. Individual manuscripts indi-
cate, however, that they were copied in the Safavid period.
Nisāburi’s and Kāshi’s books also offered rules and examples for solving quad-
ratic equations and, thus, provided the necessary foundations for the application of
algebraic concepts and techniques for instance in astronomy, inheritance calculations
or number theory. In comparison with other contemporaneous or immediately pre-
ceding Islamicate societies, number theory seems to have been more often read in the
Safavid period, not only as a basis for the construction of magic squares and hence
for the occult sciences but also on its own as a purely mathematical specialty.
In the first Safavid century, no other textbook of arithmetic and algebra beyond
these two works existed that was taught across the entire territory of Safavid Iran. In
the early eleventh/seventeenth century, Bahā al-Din al-‘Āmeli compiled his Kholāsat
al-hesāb, which became – through processes we do not understand yet – the standard
elementary schoolbook for these two mathematical disciplines in Iran, Islamicate
431
India and the Ottoman Empire during the eleventh/seventeenth and twelfth/eight-
eenth centuries. In Iran, one of the users and commentators of Bahā’ al-Din’s book
was his student and the later court astrologer Mohammad Bāqer b. Zeyn o’l-‘Ābedin
(d. after 1047/1637).11
Although these works also included elementary geometry (plane figures and
solids), geometry at madrasas saw a (re)turn toward Euclid’s Elements and the
so-called Middle Books, ancient and medieval mathematical and astronomical texts,
which were meant to be studied following the Elements and before reading Ptolemy’s
Almagest. This (re)turn is particularly noticeable during the eleventh/seventeenth
century when numerous copies of these works were produced in Isfahan and else-
where in Iran, and even, Apollonius’ Conics was again read. Almost all copies of this
series of texts represent Nasir al-Din Tusi’s editions prepared in the second third of
the seventh/thirteenth century. The Parliamentary Library in Tehran, for instance,
owns a good number of Safavid copies (mostly eleventh/ seventeenth century) of
those texts, whereas there are decidedly fewer such copies traceable for the later
Timurid period. The more prominent works such as the Elements or Theodosius
of Bithynia’s (second century BCE) Spherics resurface in ten to thirty copies,
whereas other ancient and medieval texts of the Middle Books aroused less interest.
Occasionally, other mathematical works such as ‘Omar Khayyām’s (d. ca. 412/1022)
commentary on the parallel postulate were added to these more regular combin-
ations of ancient and medieval texts for teaching (plane and spherical) geometry,
optics and astronomy. Not all copies contain marginal or interlinear notes and, thus,
may have been copied as replacements of older, by then damaged, exemplars rather
than in class. While some readers may consider ten to thirty copies mainly produced
during one century (eleventh/seventeenth) quantitatively negligible, the presence of
only two or three of these texts from the two previous centuries in the same library
invites to pay greater attention to the presence of such copies in other collections
and the preparation of systematic statistics, which includes, as far as possible, the
geographical distribution of their production.
Without further research, it is difficult to situate the new interest in this kind of
teaching literature with any precision. Combinations of some texts of the Middle
Books and parts of Euclid’s Elements together with a selection of works by Bahā
al-Din al-‘Āmeli, mixed religious texts of various authors or philosophical works by
Ebn Sinā suggest at the very least two factors behind this process: (1) Bahā’ al-Din’s
role as a teacher of the mathematical sciences and that of his student Mohammad
Bāqer b. Zeyn al-‘Ābedin Yazdi, who copied several of these manuscripts, including
Apollonius’s Conics, and wrote a commentary on Book X, one of the most complex
and complicated books of the Elements;12 (2) the general intellectual climate that
inspired some of the madrasa teachers since the later ninth/fifteenth century to pay
increasing attention to philosophical literature, first in Shiraz and later in Isfahan.
Pourjavady and Schmidtke see here at the least two phases of a turn to philosophy
among Sunni and in the Safavid period Shi‘i scholars.13 Although these two processes
showed different features with regard to metaphysics and natural philosophy, both
of them may have carried interest in the mathematical sciences as a fellow traveler
and philosophical subdiscipline.
Other geometrical school texts copied in Safavid Iran come, such as Nisāburi’s
and Kāshi’s works, from Ilkhanid and Timurid scholars such as Shams al-Din
432
Samarqandi’s (d. ca. 722/1322) Ashkāl al-ta’sis and Qazizāda Rumi’s (d. after
844/1440) commentary on it. The overall picture of teaching arithmetic, algebra
and geometry in Safavid Iran thus does not differ substantially from that offered
by material available about the Ottoman Empire. Both followed largely the prece-
dence set by Timurid courtly policies and their adherence to Ilkhanid patterns. This
feature is strongly visible in astronomical and astrological Safavid literature with
its preference for the works of Nasir al-Din Tusi, Qotb al-Din Shirāzi (d. 711/1311)
and Nezām al-Din Nisāburi on planetary models and Tusi’s short texts on the con-
struction of astrolabes and calendars. Also read were Sharaf al-Din Jaghmini’s (first
half thirteenth century) elementary introduction to planetary theory without proofs
al-Molakhkhas fi ‘elm al-hay’a and Qazizāda Rumi’s commentary on this work as
repeated copies during the Safavid period, a gloss by Gheyās al-Din Dashtaki (866–
949/1461or 2–1542) on the latter text, and commentaries on the former by Nezām
al-Din Birjandi (d. 934/1527), Shams al-Din Khafri and other authors demonstrate.
Dashtaki also participated in the debate about the modeling, criticizing aspects of
Tusi’s and Shirāzi’s works claiming to have solved all difficulties.14
Manuscripts at the Āstān-e Qods Library in Mashhad show that these works
were not only studied at the Mansuriyya Madrasa in Shiraz but continued to be
read in Isfahan during the eleventh/seventeenth century. Two of their students
and later teachers were Bahā al-Din al-‘Āmeli and Mohammad Bāqer b. Zeyn o’l-
‘Ābedin Yazdi. Bahā’ al-Din even wrote his own treatise on models for Mercury and
the Moon.15 Other readers of Bahā’ al-Din’s works left comments showing their
awareness of the debate and Safavid contributions, sometimes even announcing
their own contributions.16 Biographers occasionally mentioned the study of such
texts in classes and the production of supercommentaries.17 This engagement of the
two eleventh/seventeenth-century scholars with a planetary theory in the tradition
of Maragha and Shiraz should encourage historians of astronomy in Islamicate soci-
eties to reevaluate the overwhelmingly negative judgment of the state of the art of
the mathematical sciences in the Safavid period, including the negative evaluation of
the mathematical competence of the sheykh al-eslām Bahā al-Din al-‘Āmeli.
Commentaries on Tusi’s Tazkera fi ‘elm al-hay’a of the Safavid period are known
from Gheyās al-Din Dashtaki, Nezām al-Din Birjandi and Shams al-Din Khafri
who are scholars of the tenth/sixteenth century. Their texts continued to be copied
until the end of the Safavid period with a particular interest in the works of Khafri
and Birjandi. Commentaries on Tusi’s Bist bāb dar astorlāb by Birjandi and Tusi’s
Bist bāb dar taqvim by the court astrologer of ‘Abbās I, Mozaffar Gonābādi (d.
1031/1621) were, however, much more often copied than the explanations of
planetary movements. Practical interests in astrology and calendar making obvi-
ously dominated the astronomical and astrological practices in the Safavid realm.
Planetary theories remained primarily the subject of madrasa teachers.
As in other Islamicate societies, religious and mathematical problems could inter-
sect and invite different opinions among scholars and dynastic officials. Their core
problems were the determination of the prayer directions, the determination of the
prayer times and the determination of the new moon, in particular for the month
of fasting. While in late seventh/thirteenth-century Egypt and Syria, Mecca, Yemen,
North Africa, Anatolia and Ottoman Europe such issues were treated by a specialized
group of madrasa scholars, the movaqqetun, in Iran, no such specialization emerged.
433
Madrasa teachers as well as religious court officials took care of them. Conflicts arose
over questions as to whether such events should be calculated or observed, what was
more authoritative – astronomical or mathematical solutions or the customs of the
Prophet, the imams, companions, or perhaps natural events. The point was always
to decide who had the authority to introduce changes in any given society. It also
meant to ask whether the believers had to learn sufficient geometry, arithmetic or
astronomy to verify for themselves whether a mosque was correctly aligned.
In 936/1529, Gheyās al-Din Dashtaki was appointed the head of the religious
administration (sadr). In this function, he entered into a conflict with the court’s
sheykh al-eslām ‘Ali Karaki (d. 940/1534) about the determination of the prayer
direction. Karaki had engaged in a program of altering mosques whose prayer dir-
ection he considered faulty.18 (Dashtaki objected to Karaki’s changes and insisted on
the usage of geometrical diagrams in addition to arithmetical calculations for veri-
fying the individual values of qeblas across Iran. Both combatants penned treatises
on how to determine the true prayer directions.19 For Karaki, the change of qeblas
was a matter of correcting allegedly false calculations. For Dashtaki, it seems it was
a defense of the necessity of proof, which in those times could only be delivered by
geometrical methods. Abisaab believes that Dashtaki’s goals also consisted in the
defense of the rights of the sadr.20 In 939/1532–33, a public debate between Karaki
and Dashtaki about the qebla in front of Shah Tahmāsb (r. 930–83/1524–76) ended
in a verbal brawl between the two men, which Dashtaki apparently lost. The shah
refused to accept the sadr’s arguments for technical expertise and dismissed him
from his position.21 Dashtaki returned to Shiraz and spent the remaining years of his
life there teaching at the madrasa his father had built.
The issue of the qebla remained a topic of interest to the Safavid religious elite
during the entire period of the dynasty’s reign. Many of the leading scholars in both
Safavid centuries composed mathematical, geographical or legal treatises on this
subject, some among them even more than once. Bahā al-Din al-‘Āmeli certainly was
the most eager writer among them on this topic. He apparently compiled at least
four different works on it.22
The arts offered another access for Safavid readers and collectors to astronom-
ical knowledge. Since the fourth/eleventh century, the primary illustrated astro-
nomical text was ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sufi’s (d. 291–376/903–86) Ketāb sovar
al-kavākeb al-sābeta. ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sufi was a court astrologer in the service
of the Buyid ruler ‘Azod al-Dowla (r. 338–73/949–83). His work attracted many
Safavid customers at courts and in other urban settings. Its images in the numerous
Safavid copies in Arabic and Persian show a clear dependence on different types
of Timurid manuscripts, a few of which undoubtedly followed Ilkhanid painting
styles. Its imagery migrated early on into Zakariya b. Mohammad Qazvini’s (d.
682/1283) encyclopedic work on the marvelous things of the heavens and earth
‘Ajā’eb al-makhluqāt va-gharā’eb al-mowjudāt amalgamating there with elements
from pictorial series of the planets and zodiacal signs used in astrological depictions.
Qazvini’s work also was copied and studied several times in the Safavid period
and at the court. One example is MS Paris, BnF, Smith-Lesouëf, oriental 221. It is
one of the Arabic versions of Qazvini’s work. Its pictorial ancestor was a Timurid
manuscript as, for instance, the picture of Venus demonstrates.23 The combination
of the astronomical depiction of Sagittarius and its astrological dragon tail is older
434
and can already be found in manuscripts produced at the courts of Mongol dyn-
asties in Iran.24 Other migrations in purely astronomical contexts happened in the
eleventh/seventeenth century when images from al-Sufi’s book were painted in the
style of Rezā ‘Abbāsi in copies of Qotb al-Din Shirāzi’s al-Tohfa al-shāhiyya and an
anonymous text on the astrolabe.25 The third kind of migration took place in an art-
istic context. Individual constellations were produced in the format of single-album
pages, which were in vogue for many other nonscientific topics. An example of this
kind is a pen and ink tinted drawing of Cepheus estimated to have been made in the
eleventh/seventeenth century. The drawing is included in a turquoise blue grounded
frame with gilded flowers.
ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS AND THEIR MAKERS

Safavid astrolabes are characterized by a number of shared features. They are usually
fitted with a decorated throne. Their rete with the star pointers carries a uniquely
elegant, mostly floral design. A gazetteer of longitudes, latitudes and qebla values for
a number of cities is engraved on the matter. A few individual plates are fashioned
for Isfahan, Mecca, Mashhad and one or the other city in Iran or elsewhere. On the
astrolabe’s back usually, several markings are found: quadrants for trigonometric
calculations, solar altitudes for different cities at different times and seasonal hours,
shadow squares and astrological scales. Some astrolabes carry unusual features, for
instance, rare scales, Mecca-centered world maps or a celestial map imported from
Paris. Other instruments produced in Safavid Iran are sundials, qibla pointers or
compasses and globes.
Skilled instrument makers of the Safavid period are primarily known from
Mashhad and Isfahan. Some also worked in Shiraz, Lar, Tabriz and possibly in
Yazd.26 King emphasizes, however, that very little is known about many of them,
and that ‘only two major Safavid astrolabes have been properly published’. What
was known about them in 1999, he presented in a table.27 Since then, only one
major study has been published about astrolabes held at the Maritime Museum
Greenwich, including several beautiful items from the Safavid period.28
Most extant Safavid astrolabes were produced by very skilled metal workers and
are graced by elegant designs, in particular, of the throne and the spider with its star
pointers. Several instrument makers collaborated, either engraving the astronom-
ical parts or being responsible for the artwork. Inscriptions of this kind appear in
particular on late Safavid instruments. A number of Safavid instruments are purely
decorative objects without all the engravings necessary for astronomical or astro-
logical operations. Since they often carry the names of famous instrument makers,
Gingerich, King and Saliba proposed to consider them forgeries.29
Instruments made most likely in Isfahan are most often signed by Khalil
Mohammad b. Hasan ‘Ali (fl. ca. 1085–1119/1674–1708), ‘Abd al-A’emma (fl. ca.
1095-11/1685–1715), ‘Abd al-‘Ali, Mohammad Moqim Yazdi and Mohammad
Mahdi al-Khādem Yazdi (fl. ca. 1057/1647–1070/1660). The latter two are assumed
to have perhaps been brothers.30 In addition to their astrolabes, they produced qebla
pointers (compasses) and sundials. Some of them also made globes. The most pro-
lific instrument maker among them was ‘Abdo’l-A’emma.31 The Museum for the
History of Science in Oxford, for instance, alone owns twelve instruments signed
435
by him either as the maker or as the engraver for the period of 1132/1700–20.
In the latter function, he cooperated with Khalil Mohammad, who produced the
instruments.32 Khalil Mohammad also worked with other instrument makers in
this kind of labor division. Several of ‘Abd al-A’emma’s instruments were made for
members of the Safavid family and its viziers or governors. Other recipients of the late
Safavid astrolabes were, for instance, the sheykh al-eslām of Tabriz Mirzā ‘Atā Allāh
Hoseyni.33 This may explain the instruments’ high artistic quality. These exemplars
apparently were objects of display rather than scientific work. At the same time, they
were objects of religious devotion and expressions of political power.
A Persian inscription, originally written to honor the governor of Fars, Allāh
Verdi Khān (ca. 1570s–1613), on an astrolabe produced by Mohammad Moqim
and decorated by Mohammad Mahdi in 1055/1645–46 reflects this multifaceted
meaning of a Safavid astrolabe:
This is the mirror of Alexander which is the model and sign (?) of the superior
[i.e.: celestial] bodies. It is one of the gift of those who sit in heaven, a sign of
government and empire. and this is the cup showing the world, which is the
weight and measure of the inferior (i.e.: the terrestrial) cup. It is one of the pearls
of the firm rope of political and military command. That is, the comrade and
companion of the empire, from Moon to fish (i.e.: everywhere). The friend and
associate of the greater luminary of the caliphate and monarchy, Amir al-omarā’
al-‘iyām Allāhverdi Khān, Bakma (?) ebn Jalāl al-Din Mohammad b. Kamāl
Monajjem. In the hope that the famous name of that intrepid individual, which
is like the star fard al-shojā‘ on the spider plate (i.e.: the rete), be a remembrance
to the enemies of religion and state. […]34
A less productive, but more formally trained instrument maker was Mohammad
Hoseyn (fl. ca. 1055–75/1645–65). In 1057/1647–48, he designed his first known
astrolabe. Some thirteen years later, he was one of the craftsmen who produced the
astrolabes with a Mecca-centered world map. Mohammad Hoseyn is also the rare
exception with regard to biographical data. The reason for his exceptional position
among the Safavid craftsmen is the fact that he was the son of a Safavid astrol-
oger with proven mathematical interest and talent – Mohammad Bāqer b. Zeyn
al-‘Ābedin. Mohammad Hoseyn reports that he received his education, including
the making of instruments, from his father. As a result of this education, he authored
several texts on instrument making. Mohammad Hoseyn wrote one of these texts,
dealing with the construction of an astrolabe, during his pilgrimage to Mashhad in
1072/1661–62.35
In Mashhad, astrolabes and globes were made by Hasan b. Sa‘d Qā’eni (fl.
1043/1633–34), Rezvān Bik Zarnishān (flourished ca. 1043/1633–34) and
Mohammad Zamān (fl. 1050/1640–41 to 1054/1644–45).36 (One of the three
globes produced in Mashhad was made for the province’s governor Manuchehr
Khān (d. 1046/1636)). It will be discussed below.
Astrolabes, globes and other instruments were not always produced by specialized
instrument makers. Occasionally, madrasa teachers or independent scholars also
engaged in such manual labor as the astrolabe made in 1047/1637–38 by Qotb
al-Din ‘Abd al-Hayy Lāri (fl. between 1017/1607 and 1032/1622) proves Qotb
436
al-Din Lāri is known as the author of two treatises on elementary astronomy and
astrology. The more elaborate of the two, Hall va-‘aqd, was well-appreciated in
Iran, India and the Ottoman Empire. He was one of the scholarly notables of Lar
who took care of the sick Pietro della Valle (1586–1652) in about 1622 and shared
many of their scholarly, religious and political knowledge and beliefs with him.
Mohammad Zamān from Mashhad also belongs to this group of scholarly trained
makers of astronomical instruments, since he was an astrologer.37
While Safavid astrolabes are linked among each other by several features, globes,
in contrast, show greater variation. Like astrolabes, they are mostly made of brass.
However, there is also an undated and unsigned globe, judged by Savage-Smith as
being possibly Safavid, which was made from paper-mâché and plaster mounted on
a fiber core. She assumes that it was produced for teaching purposes.38
MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE

Given the very limited research on medical education and practice during the reign
of the Safavids, no contextualized depiction of its content and representatives can be
offered here. The research of Newman and Speziale clarifies that earlier evaluations
of a religious, narrow-minded rejection of theoretical medicine and a preference for
sufferance over cures taken from the Greco-Islamic body of knowledge, the sayings
of the imams or the Sunni prophetic medicine should be regarded with caution.
In the specific cases studied by them, such interpretation needs to be abandoned.
Both scholars see the second Safavid century as a time when scholars connected
with the central court as well as people engaged in heated religious and political
polemics against the so-called fundamentalist (osuli) camp of the Shi‘i clergy and
were strongly interested in the sayings of the imams on a variety of topics, including
medicine.39
Newman stresses the desire of the Safavid shahs of the second half of the eleventh/
seventeenth century to take a conciliatory position in these struggles with the aim to
secure their own authority in the country.40 They appointed various clerics as sheykh
al-eslām to achieve this goal, among them Mohammad Bāqer-Majlesi. His efforts
to reconcile these different camps are also visible in his discussions about medical
theory and practice in his multivolume work Behār al-anvār, which he compiled
over several decades. The medical chapters, which were part of the volumes on the
heavens and the world, were finished around 1105/1693. In them, Majlesi brings
together theoretical positions taken from Ebn Sinā’s al-Qānun fi‘l-tebb, unnamed
authorities from among the hokamā’ and atebbā’, several dictionaries, collections of
medical elaborations of the imams and other religious authorities and Shi‘i works of
the Buyid period, which had attracted rising attention during the late sixteenth and
again since the thirties of the seventeenth centuries.41 In Newman’s view, al-Majlesi
did not consider revelation as in irreconcilable conflict with theoretical medicine as
taught by the philosophers and formally educated physicians.42 The Golden Epistle,
(falsely) attributed to Emām Rezā, already made this point. Its inclusion into the
Behār al-anvār then served to bolster and justify this position.
Speziale situates the copying and translating of The Golden Epistle into Persian
in a more variegated medical and religiously scholarly context than Newman. He
shows that professional physicians took recourse to the material of Shi‘i and Sunni
437
religious discourses on medical theory and practice in Iran and India long before the
Safavid dynasty but also again during the Safavid period.43 This connection between
Greco-Islamic theoretical medicine and religiously sanctioned medical elaborations
took different forms. One of the physicians at Shāh ‘Abbās’s II court in Isfahan, for
instance, added a final chapter on the sayings of the imams to each of his two med-
ical works.44
Over the centuries, a specific concept of the wise imam, skilled in medicine,
alchemy and healing was formed replacing the figure of the prophet as a healer
cherished among Sunni believers.45 The Golden Epistle contributed to such a notion
despite the fact that it is highly unlikely that it was composed by Emām Rezā in
the early third/ninth century as its narrative of coming into being claims. Speziale
believes that its origin is to be found in the early fifth/eleventh century among Shi‘i
enthusiasts of medicine or physicians with strong Shi‘i leanings. Even with such
a date, it represents a much earlier and more profound engagement among Shi‘i
scholars with ancient and medieval medical and natural philosophical theories than
was the case with authors of texts on prophetic medicine. Speziale names physiology,
anatomy and therapy as major medical themes of The Golden Epistle.46 This the-
matic orientation resembles closely that of Majlesi’s Behār al-anvār.
The story of the healing, theoretically, educated imam did not only broaden the
framework for Shi‘i religious scholars’ engagement with scientific medicine in the
Safavid period. In Speziale’s view, it enabled the creation and maintenance of one
of the few hospitals built in the Safavid period. During Shāh Tahmāsb’s reign, the
Shrine of Emām Rezā entertained a hospital. As its patron, Tahmāsb appointed ‘Emād
al-Din Shirāzi (d. 1000/1592), a physician at the shah’s court, as its head.47 Having
received his education from his father, a physician well-trained in the medical the-
ories of Ebn Sinā and other scholars of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early
Modern Period, ‘Emād al-Din Shirāzi started his professional life as a doctor of the
local ruler of Shirvan, with whom he became involved in a serious conflict resulting
in a punishment that caused ‘Emād serious health damages. From there, his way
led him via the Safavid court to Mashhad, where he contributed his medical know-
ledge and experience to the evolving ritual of spiritually sanctioned healing (Speziale
2004: 30). ‘Emād al-Din Shirāzi also wrote a number of medical and pharmaceutical
treatises such as a text about the medical usage of opium, another one about syphilis
and a third one about ‘the Chinese root’, a rhizome of one of the many East Asian
kinds of smilax, used for the former’s treatment.48
Similar institutions, often dedicated to the poor and a kind of low-level palliative
care – to use a modern concept – existed in other bigger cities of the country. Some
of them employed well-educated physicians, while others worked with herbalists
and other practitioners. Five physicians worked at the same time in one of the courts
of Tahmāsb and ‘Abbās I and those hospitals or dispensaries. Other theoretically
educated doctors held positions with Sufi sheykhs or governors.49
Medical works of the Safavid period provide some clues as to which books were
considered relevant to the knowledge of well-educated doctors and as respectable
sources for compiling different kinds of medical writings. In 924/1518, for instance,
the physician Mohammad b. Yusof Haravi (fl. 898–924/1492–1518) compiled
his medical dictionary Ketāb bahr al-javāher fi tahqiq al-mostalahāt al-tebbiyya
alphabetically arranged, providing explanations of anatomical, pathological and
438
medicinal terms in Arabic and sometimes also in Persian. In addition to linguistic

dictionaries, Haravi mined a good number of medical and pharmaceutical works,
among them Ebn Sinā’s al-Qānun fi’l-tebb and his philosophical encyclopedia
al-Shefā’, commentaries on the Qānun and, surprisingly, primarily works by medical
writers who had lived in Egypt or Syria between the fifth/eleventh and the eighth/
fourteenth centuries.50 One of these writers was the Mamluk physician and religious
scholar Ebn al-Nafis (d. 687/1288), whose commentary on Ebn Sinā’s Qānun was
recognized by Qotb al-Din Shirāzi as central for his own understanding of the great
medical encyclopedia (Fancy, oral communication). Ebn al-Nafis’s commentary, the
epitome of the Qānun called Ketāb al-mojāz fi’ l-tebb and attributed to him, and
several commentaries of this work were studied in Timurid Iran during the ninth/
fifteenth century. Haravi was one of the late Timurid, early Safavid scholars who
worked with both the texts of Ebn al-Nafis. This could suggest that they were used
as teaching texts as was the case in Mamluk and Ottoman madrasas.51 Furthermore,
Ebn al-Beytar’s Materia medica also made it into Iran and was used directly or via
epitomes by Timurid and Safavid medical authors.52
Material in manuscript catalogs confirms such an assumption to some degree.
‘Emād al-Din Shirāzi, for instance, wrote a commentary on the anatomical part of
Ebn Sinā’s al-Qānun fi’l-tebb.53 Several physicians who held positions at the central
court wrote medical treatises on theoretical subject matters as well as specific cures.
They engaged in teaching their male children but also took other students. As in other
Islamicate societies, some of the teachers at Safavid madrasas, among them famous
scholars such as Bahā al-Din al- ‘Āmeli or Mir Dāmād (d. 1041/1631–32), also gave
medical classes and had even later prominent physicians among their students.
As in the case of astronomy, some of the medical and pharmaceutical works
produced in Antiquity or Islamicate societies before the rise of the Safavid dynasty
were either copied and illustrated or translated into Persian and illustrated during
the dynasty’s reign. The text that drew the most attention and that was illustrated
by gifted painters and hence sponsored by wealthy patrons is Dioscurides’s Materia
medica. An Arabic version was apparently prepared in Isfahan in 1038/1629. A
new Persian translation was possibly made in Mashhad in 1068/1659. Both copies
are preserved in Iranian libraries. Other exemplars of this work, equally lavishly
illustrated, can be found in European libraries. Several of them include pictorial
references to foreign visitors and early modern European painting styles. A system-
atic investigation of their texts, images, paratexts, bindings and contexts is highly
desirable.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND SURPRISES

The most important achievement thus far attributed to scholars living in Safavid
times concern contributions to modeling planetary orbits according to Aristotelian
physics. Problems in planetary theory were debated since Antiquity. Scholars of
the mathematical sciences and philosophers in Islamicate societies debated these
problems to various degrees since the ninth century. Over time, they compiled six-
teen such problems that they thought needed to be addressed. Most prominent
among them were those that violated Aristotelian physics and those that visibly
contradicted what could be seen in the night sky. Aristotelian physics demanded,
439
for instance, a perfect supralunar world with one perfect movement only for each
celestial body. This movement was circular and uniform. All celestial bodies had
to move around a single center. The models accepted and propagated by Ptolemy
violated these demands in several instances through their epicycles that carried the
planets, the moon and the sun and the displacements of the centers of each orb from
the center of the universe. The most obvious violation of what could be observed
was the too big apparent angular diameter of the Moon in its monthly variations,
which followed from Ptolemy’s second inequality or anomaly of the lunar motion.
The models and their devices introduced by scholars of Islamicate societies since the
thirteenth century repaired some of these theoretical and observational difficulties.
Therewith they guaranteed compliance with the accepted physics of the heavens and
created models for planetary motions that agreed almost fully with what Ptolemy’s
models achieved.54
The discovery of a continued and sophisticated discussion of these quite tech-
nical issues in sixteenth-century Shiraz by Saliba in the 1990s was a surprise since
until then it was believed that the only follower of the new models and devices
invented by the scholars in Ilkhanid Maragha had been Ebn al-Shāter (1304–75) in
Damascus. Shams al-Din Khafri’s commentary on al-Sharif al-Jorjāni’s (d. 816/1413)
commentary on al-Tazkera fi ‘elm al-hay’a explained concepts and passages that
Khafri considered obscure or difficult to understand. His discussion focused above
all on the displacement of the center of the orbs from the center of the universe and
its various consequences in the models for the Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and
Saturn.55 Khafri invented models for all these celestial bodies that only use spheres
moving in uniform circular movements around their own centers. However, he did
not solve the problem regarding the too big size of Ptolemy’s apparent lunar diam-
eter at the quadrature.56
Since Khafri proposed several alternative models for the Moon and Mercury ful-
filling the demanded conditions and agreeing at the observational points well with
Ptolemy’s models, Saliba proposed to understand this as ‘a new departure under-
taken by Khafri which identified ‘mathematics then, as a tool for the astronomer,
(as) just like a language’.57 This, however, ignores the standard geometrical practice
exercised in the Elements and familiar to every student of planetary theory as his
most basic geometrical schooling. It also masks the fact that proposing alternative
models was a well-established practice among the scholars of Maragha. Qotb al-Din
Shirāzi in particular applied one in his astronomical works, with which Khafri was
intimately familiar.
The greatest surprise, however, was the discovery of a Mecca-centered map on
one of the plates (diameter 22.5 cm) of three astrolabes with an unusual projection.
These three instruments appeared in 1989, 1995 and 2001 on the private art markets.
According to the studies of King and his colleagues, their grid is highly sophisticated.
On it, about 150 localities are marked according to their angular distances from
Mecca, which is placed in the map’s center. Two scales, one around the map’s cir-
cumference and the other fixed at the center, allow the reading off of directions and
distances. Such a device with its projection was previously unknown for maps made
in societies in western Asia, North Africa and Europe. King suggests a third/ninth- or
fourth/tenth-century origin and rejects the assumption of a European invention of
the projection since no sources could be found applying it. The geographical data
440
of the Safavid instruments come from a table with 274 entries compiled under the
Timurid dynasty. Its author remains unknown but may have been linked to Ologh
Beg’s team of scholars in Samarkand in the first half of the ninth/fifteenth century.
That is why King thinks it is possible that the original map, of which those on the
Safavid instruments appear to be copies, was designed by Timurid scholars working
with methods invented in the Abbasid caliphate.58
COURTLY EDUCATION AND PATRONAGE

The offices of head astrologer and head physician were important to Safavid rulers
and their elites as indicated above. In addition to these leading professionals, about
whose selection for either of the two offices we know practically nothing and a com-
plete list of whom has yet to be compiled, other doctors and astrologers worked in
the royal camp since the early Safavid shahs were often in war and otherwise mostly
lived on horseback. Whether they had more than a smattering of knowledge of the
technical terms and methods of their experts is difficult to gauge, since they did not
write their knowledge down nor did the court historians report in detail about it.
There is one exception to this overall lack of specific information about royal
knowledge of the mathematical sciences and medicine. The Arthur M. Sackler
Museum at Harvard University owns a beautiful copy of an anthology of schol-
arly texts and some extracts of the belles-lettres produced for Shāh Soleymān dated
1070/1660. This anthology contains 152 different shorter and longer texts, tables
and star constellations. It includes numerous diagrams, beautiful ornaments, col-
orful calligraphy in ten different colors and a world map in the tradition of the
later copies of Qazvini’s above-mentioned panorama of the natural, divine and jinni
worlds. Although often elementary, the texts cover a broad range of fields of know-
ledge: kalām, Shi‘i law, hadith, ‘erfān, philosophy, logic, medicine, geometry, number
theory, arithmetic, planetary theory, calendars, prayer directions, astrology, geog-
raphy, music, metrics, grammar, sand divination, lettrism, beliefs about hell, jinns,
devils and angels and more. Some important scholars whose texts are included in this
collection in an abbreviated form or who are mentioned in it are Pythagoras, Plato,
Aristotle, Hippocrates, Euclid, Ptolemy, Abu Nasr al-Fārābi (fl. ca. 256–870–950),
Ebn Sinā, Fakhr al-Din al-Rāzi (544–606/1149–1210), Nasir al-Din Tusi and Qotb
al-Din Shirāzi. Among the diagrams are a compass for finding the prayer directions,
a model of the universe, a plan of the Haram in Mecca, the process of seeing and
geometrical figures nicely colored. The tables include ways of writing numbers in
signs and words, longitudes and latitudes of major cities of the Islamicate world,
astrological information useful for horoscopes or calendars, the theoretical struc-
turing of the world in four elements, qualities, and other factors and a kind of travel
plan informing the potential traveler about distances between cities, villages or travel
inns and the hours between them. The figures representing star constellations were
copied from a Timurid ancestor.
Many texts copied or written during the Safavid period are dedicated to Safavid
rulers. Some of them are also dedicated to princes or court officials. The great
number of such dedicated manuscripts testifies to the perception of scholars of the
great role of the court for scientific textual activities.59 There is, however, no com-
plete survey of such dedicated texts available for the entire Safavid period.
441
MASHHAD – A REGIONAL CENTER OF ASTRONOMICAL

ARTWORK
The geography of the mathematical sciences and medicine is badly known for
Safavid Iran. Given the series of epidemics that ravaged the country in the two
centuries, one could assume that in addition to the central court, each provincial
governor had his own medical staff composed at the very least of one, but more
likely several physicians, one or more herbalists and perhaps a surgeon or a barber.60
Specialization as an oculist also existed as the case of ‘Emād al-Din Shirāzi’s son
Mohammad at the court of Shāh ‘Abbās I indicates.61 Sometimes an administrative
official even wrote about a medical topic.62 Travel accounts of visitors from Europe
are contradictory. Some like Pietro della Valle report of competent physicians in pro-
vincial towns such as Lar, whereas others such as Thomas Herbert (1606–82) deny
the presence of any physician, qualified or not.63 Some kind of intellectual interest,
including the sciences, among Safavid governors in Azerbaijan, Fars and Mashhad, is
confirmed by manuscripts and suggested by missionaries such as Gabriel de Chinon
(1610–68) and gentlemen travelers such as Jean de Thevenot (1633–67).64
The abovementioned collection of short texts produced for Mirzā Taher Vahid
Qazvini (d. 1699) and covering the entire range of intellectual fields pursued in
Safavid Iran was not only re-edited for Shāh Soleymān but also copied for several
other members of the elite. Although most of these snippets are either elementary or
too short to provide more than a few limited glances into the various fields of know-
ledge, the repeated ‘reprint’ of the collection testifies to the educational and conver-
sational minima accepted as necessary among the Safavid elite. Gabriel de Chinon,
Jean de Thevenot and other travelers to Iran speak of a greater and more substan-
tially grounded interest of administrative officials in Azerbaijan in the sciences and
even technology in the early second half of the seventeenth century. Traces of such
interest can also be found in miniatures of Safavid manuscripts, although there they
rather testify to the presence of foreign books and images about astronomy, medi-
cine or canon ball production than true efforts of installing mining enterprises or
investing in alchemical procedures.
Another well-educated governor of Safavid Iran was the above-mentioned Abo’l-
Fath Manuchehr Khān. He entered into the governorship of Mashhad when his
father, who held this post before him, died in 1033/1623. Seven or eight years later, he
commissioned a new Persian translation of ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Sufi’s Star Catalogue
and a celestial globe. Two lavishly illustrated manuscripts of this translation are
extant today (MSS New York, New York Public Library, Spencer Pers. 6; Cairo, Dar
al-Kutub, MMF 9). The globe resurfaced recently on the international art market
from the collection of a private owner and was sold again into a private collection.65
The Spencer manuscript, its paintings and its introduction have been discussed
and summarized by art historians.66 The Cairo manuscript needs still to be analyzed.
The introduction to the new Persian translation prepared at Manuchehr’s court
presents its translator, the court astrologer Hasan b. Sa‘d Qā’eni (d. after 1041/1632),
as a person who also observed positions of some of the star constellations anew.67
This claim has not been checked so far. It is in conflict with Qā’eni’s reference to
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s and Ologh Beg’s astronomical handbooks as his sources for
correcting coordinate values. It is known that despite the new observations carried
442
out at Samarkand the astronomical data of Ulugh Beg’s version of ‘Abd al-Rahmān
al-Sufi’s Star Catalogue were appropriated from Nasir al-Din Tusi’s Zij-e Ilkhāni.68
(Hence, as long as there is no comparative analysis of the star coordinates, Qā’eni’s
self-representation should be taken with a grain of salt).
Further information in the introduction concerns the copyist, the draftsman
and the painter of the Spencer manuscript. Mohammad Bāqer Hāfez is identified
with the calligrapher Mohammad Bāqer b. Mollā Mahmud Gilāni who is known
from colophons in seventeen other manuscripts copied between 1040/1630 and
1042/1632. Ostād Malek Hoseyn was a prominent painter at Manuchehr’s court.
He was also involved in illustrating the so-called Windsor Shāhnāma, one of the most
praised Safavid copies of Ferdowsi’s opus.69 In addition, further painters contributed
to the production of the Cairo manuscript without being named.
The illustrations of the Spencer copy have been interpreted differently by different
art historians. The authors of Slaves of the Shahs see in them a new style of illus-
trating the astronomical work where the painter is said to have experimented with
techniques of modeling and shading.70 They also believe that this modeling and
shading was encouraged by European or Indian pictorial sources. Yet, European
images of the star constellations do not resemble any of the Safavid exemplars
related to the paintings made in Mashhad. In Schmitz’s view, most of the images of
the Spencer manuscript are the work of Malek Hoseyn’s son Mohammad ‘Ali.71 If
the father was at all involved in the production of one of the two copies, she thinks
it was the Cairene manuscript, produced in 1044/1633–34, which contains with the
picture of Virgo perhaps a trace of his art. I have doubted this interpretation offering
several arguments to the contrary.72
For Babaie, Babayan, Baghdiantz-McCabe and Farhad, the lavishly illustrated
Spencer manuscript of Sufi’s Star Catalogue defines Manuchehr as a highly literate
patron of the arts and scientific books. Although they had no other artwork proving
this judgment, the recently resurfaced, dated and signed celestial globe confirms the
governor’s interest in the mathematical sciences in artistic format. The globe was
commissioned by the governor in 1042/1633–34 after the two manuscripts had been
finished. It was signed by the astrologer who had translated Sufi’s Star Catalogue a
few years earlier, by the painter Malek Hoseyn and the silversmith and inlay maker
Rezvān Bik Zarnishān.73 The style and execution of the figurative constellations
on the globe show – without surprise – clear connections to the paintings in the
manuscripts. According to Savage-Smith, the globe’s workmanship is of the highest
quality. Some of the constellations are executed in peculiar fashions pointing to
different models used for their representation. As in the case of the art-historical
evaluation of the paintings in the manuscripts, Savage-Smith assumes European
influence in at least one case – the depiction of Andromeda from behind.74
FOREIGN VISITORS AND THEIR INTERACTIONS WITH

SAFAVID SCHOLARS AND INSTRUMENT MAKERS
In the Safavid period, an increasing number of foreign visitors came from Iran’s
immediate neighbors, countries in Europe and occasionally also South East Asia
to the three capitals of the dynasty. Most were either diplomats, or members of
official commercial or religious delegations. Scholarly interested and educated men
443
often were part of their missions, as secretaries, physicians or missionaries. Others

came as private merchants or adventurers, in search of gain or patronage, or were
just travelers on their way to India or points further to the East. They all brought
gifts for the shah and his courtiers. These gifts left traces in manuscripts, maps,
paintings, on instruments and occasionally in historical chronicles. Carmelite mis-
sionaries brought Euclid’s Elements in one of their Arabic editions and other Arabic
books recently printed by the Medici Press in Rome. They are said to have ended
in the treasury of Allāh Verdi Khān. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–89) apparently
brought a celestial map to Isfahan, which seems to have served as orientation for the
representation of the constellations of the northern and southern hemispheres on an
astrolabe made by Mohammad Mahdi al-Khādem in 1065/1654–55.75 The astrolabe
maker justified his decision to include a French or Latin celestial map in his astrolabe
by referring to the precision of the astronomers in Europe:
Since there are contradictions in the locations of the fixed stars among previous
scholars, and because the most accurate [star maps] are in the observatories of
the Franks [western Europe], the locations of the fixed stars are shown here
according to authoritative observations made within the past ten years.76
The engraving of the astrolabe dragged on for five years since the latest dated inscrip-
tion was added in 1070/1659–60.77 (Several inscriptions address Safi Qoli Beg, an
emir of Shāh ‘Abbās II.)
Another Safavid astrolabe showing acquaintance with artistic and technical
elements of astrolabes produced in Europe is one of the instruments made by
Mohammad Moqim and decorated by Mohammad Mahdi al-Khādem. The art-
istic element is the tulip-like design of the rete with a bird inside characteristic
of astrolabes made in sixteenth-century Louvain. The magnetic compass fitted
into the throne is also thought of showing European inspiration, although some
astrolabes also carry magnetic compasses of local design, among those with the
Mecca-centered world map.78
Safavid miniatures show the acquaintance of the painters with Italian fortress
maps and books on canon casting. The European visitors also took a broad variety
of objects home, partly out of curiosity, partly because gift-giving was an important
component of the knowledge culture in early modern countries in Europe, partly
because they wished to correct false knowledge about Iran and because they wished
to share at home what they had learned during their stay in the country. Pietro
della Valle brought Persian historical manuscripts home and wrote in Latin a new
geography of Iran. Adam Olearius drew a map of the Caspian Sea and northern
Iran, claiming to have used earlier Arabic and Persian maps by Nasir al-Din Tusi
and other Muslim scholars. In truth, however, much of the content of his map was
derived from western maps to which he added Arabic or Persian toponymy and
names of provinces. Jean Chardin (1643–1713) visited astrolabe makers in their
shops in Isfahan.79 Tavernier acquired a set of longitude and latitude coordinates
derived from a famous Central Asian list of which only a few later traces are found
in Arabic and Persian sources.80 Missionaries translated Persian pharmaceutical and
other texts or wrote for the local educated people books on religious, natural philo-
sophical and cosmological topics.81
444
But visitors from European countries were not the only ones who exchanged
ideas and objects with Safavid shahs, courtiers and scholars. Indian manuscripts on
astronomical and pharmaceutical texts also made their way to Iran. Given their art-
istic quality, it is most likely that they too were brought as gifts to the Safavid court.
All in all, scientific life in Safavid Iran was much livelier and multifaceted than
often depicted.
NOTES
1 King 1999.
2 Saliba 1994; 1997.
3 Newman 2003; 2009; 2012.
4 Speziale 2004.
5 Sachau and Ethé 1889: 232, n° 596.
6 Mitchell 2009: 264; MS London, British Library, Or. 13215.
7 Mitchell 2009: 264; MS London, British Library, Or. 6263.
8 Newman 2006: 197, fn 118.
9 Brentjes 2010.
10 Tādjbakhsh 2012: 32.
11 MS Tehran, Ketābkhāna-ye Majles-e Shurā’i 2341: fols 37–98.
12 Ibid.: fols 125–9.
13 Pourjavady and Schmidtke 2015.
14 Saliba 1991: 93–4.
15 Abisaab 2004: 171.
16 Saliba 1991: 95–7.
17 Saliba 1994: 36.
18 King 1999: 137.
19 Ibid.: 134; Abisaab 2004: 161; Pourjavady 2011: 28.
20 Abisaab 2004: 18.
21 Pourjavady 2011: 28; Abisaab 2004: 18.
22 King 1999: 134–6; Abisaab 2004: 161.
23 MS Paris, BnF, Smith-Lesouëf, oriental 221, fol. 13a.
24 MS Paris, BnF, Smith-Lesouëf, oriental 221, fol. 20b.
25 Brentjes 2014: 489–92.
26 Savage-Smith 1992: 47–8.
27 King 1999: 263–4.
28 Charette 2006: 236–71.
29 Gingerich et al. 1972: 191–6.
30 King 1999: 265.
31 Ibid.: 259.
32 http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/collections/imu-search-page/results/?query=%60Abd%20al-A'imm
a&thumbnails=on&querytype=basic
33 http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/a-fine-safavid-brass-astrolabe-tabriz-iran-5885515-
details.aspx).
34 Charette 2006: 237.
35 King 1999: 256.
36 Mezghāni n.d.: 9, 20.
37 King 1999: 258.
38 Savage-Smith 1992: 47.
39 Newman 2003: 395; Speziale 2004: 9.
445
40 Newman 2012: 117–8.

41 Ibid.: 118–25.
42 Newman 2003: 396; 2009: 342.
43 Speziale 2004: 9–11.
44 Tadjbakhsh2003: 236–8.
45 Speziale 2004: 13.
46 Ibid.: 15, 29.
47 Tadjbakhsh 2012: 28–9.
48 Ibid.: 28.
49 Ibid.: 28–36.
50 Savage-Smith https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/mon10.html
51 Fancy 2012.
52 Savage-Smith https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/bioT.html.
53 Savage-Smith 2011: 266.
54 Ragep 2004: 126–8.
55 Saliba 1994: 19–20.
56 Ibid.: 24–31.
57 Saliba 1997: 119.
58 King 2005: 171–5.
59 Brentjes 2010: 373–402.
60 Newman 2011: 26, 29; Monshi 1978 (trans.): I, 263–6.
61 Golshāni et al. 1392/2013: 170.
62 Newman 2011: 27.
63 Brentjes 2004.
64 Ibid.
65 Mezghāni n.d.
66 Schmitz 1992: 123–4; Babaie, Babayan and Farhad 2004: 128.
67 Babaie et al. 2004: 128.
68 Blochet 1912: 48–9.
69 Newman 2006: 90; Robinson, Sims and Bayani 2007: 24–5 and figs. 1A–1B.
70 Babaie Babayan and Farhad 2004: 128.
71 Schmitz 1992: 123–4.
72 Brentjes 2014: 49293.
73 Mezghāni n.d.: 9.
74 Mezghāni n.d.: 200.
75 Savage-Smith 1992: 65–6.
76 Ibid.: 66.
77 http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/10756.html?_ga=1.145823601.4191166
76.1432048098#Jj2UMOifoeHM76lL.97.
78 King 1999: 265; http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/10728.html#URjODu
WYVxvIqbFe.97.
79 King 1999: 269.
80 Ibid.: 158.
81 Richard 2005–06; Newman 2011: 27.
446

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The Safavid World

The mathematical sciences and medicine in Safavid Iran

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of more substantive similarities in the bureaucratic and professional organization of

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ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS AND THEIR MAKERS

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often were part of their missions, as secretaries, physicians or missionaries. Others

40 Newman 2012: 117–8.

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