ʿABD-AL-MONʿEM ʿĀMELĪ, 10th/16th century astronomer. He apparently was commissioned to build an observatory at Isfahan by the Safavid Shah Ṭahmāsp I (1524-76). The king would have been pursuing the aborted design of his predecessor, Shah Esmāʿīl I (1502-24), to restore the observatory at Marāḡa. ʿAbd-al-Moṇʿem in any case planned an observatory. About 1560 he wrote a Persian work whose title is lost in the unique manuscript; it is usually called by modern scholars the Ketāb taʿlīm ālāt-e zīǰ (“Book of instruction on astronomical instruments”). In this work he explains his unrealized project and describes previous observatories at Alexandria, Marāḡa, Samarqand, and elsewhere.
Bibliography:
A. Sayili, The Observatory in Islam, Ankara, 1960, pp. 288-89.
H. J. Seemann, “Die Instrumente der Sternwarte zu Maragha nach den Mitteilungen von al-ʿUrḍī,” Sb. der Physikalisch-medizinischen Societät zu Erlangen 60, 1928 (1929), pp. 121-26. Storey, II/1, p. 85.
(D. Pingree)
Originally Published: December 15, 1982
Last Updated: July 14, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 2, p. 130
D. Pingree, “'Abd-Al-Mon'em 'Ameli,” Encyclopædia Iranica, I/2, p. 130; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abd-al-monem-ameli-16th-century-astronomer (accessed on 16 January 2014).
