Talk:Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf

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Ethnicity
He is described in this article as being "Ottoman Turkish", which may have been true at some level but both the place-name Ash Shami and the further surname As Saadi, place him firmly as the descendent of nomadic Arabs from Yemen who settled in Damascus. I have thus changed it to reflect this almost-certain issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abedwayyad (talk • contribs) 14:00, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Ottoman victory?
The article claims "Within months of the observatory's completion, however, al-Din witnessed a comet and, thinking the comet was an omen, predicted an Ottoman military victory. This prediction was incorrect,... The observatory was razed in 1580." According to M.A. Cook's 1976 "The History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730," the Ottomans held their own against the Persians until well into the 17th century. See Istanbul observatory of Taqi al-Din, which offers two possible reasons for the razing, a plague that undermined al-Din's forecast of well-being, and general indifference to science by an emerging clerical faction. Loss to the Persians is not offered as a reason, and indeed the Ottomans did quite well against both the Persians and the Austrians during the last quarter of the 16th century. On the other hand the article Battle of Lepanto (1571) paints a more ambiguous picture: six years before the 1577 construction of the observatory the Ottomans lost a strategically decisive naval battle. After that loss and continuing well after the razing of the observatory, the Ottomans bounced back strongly and won the majority of their campaigns. So on the books the Ottomans still seemed to have the upper hand, but they may have realized that Lepanto had nonetheless greatly undermined their strength. But unless the Ottomans' military fortunes took a turn for the worse during the three-year lifetime of the observatory, which doesn't seem to have been the case, it is hard to justify the razing in terms of any failed military prediction. This is one case where Wikipedia is (hopefully temporarily) less accurate even than the comics: Peter Bagge's "History of science" comic page in the May 2009 issue of Discover magazine has al-Din saying "But we defeated the Persians, just as I had predicted." On the other hand Bagge's portrayal of Murad III himself as unsympathetic to science seems completely at odds with all descriptions of him save perhaps the Wikipedia article on him---al-Din's nemesis seems to have been Murad's clerics as the complete antithesis of another religious order that had arisen only a few decades earlier, the Jesuits. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 06:58, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Dubious
The following addition seems dubious:


 * Taqi al-Din instead used a simpler example from astrophysics to demonstrate it. He stated that if the ray of light had come from the eye, it would take too long to see the stars, which are millions of kilometres away from the Earth. He then states that since the speed of light is constant, "it would take too long for it to travel to the star and come back to the eye. But this is not the case, since we see the star as soon as we open our eyes. Therefore the light must emerge from the object not from the eyes."

I'll buy the part about, "if the ray of light had come from the eye, it would take too long to see the star". However, the remainder is questionable, and seems reverse-engineered with modern ideas. I checked the source and it was unclear whether it was Taqi al-Din making this assertion or the author. At any rate, "millions of kilometers" makes me strongly suspect the latter since the metric system did not appear until the Napoleonic era and the distance to a star (other than the Sun) wasn't known until 1838. The idea that the velocity of light is a fixed constant is even more recent. (See the Michelson–Morley experiment.) I think that paragraph needs other citations to back it up, or else it needs to be trimmed.&mdash;RJH (talk) 22:27, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

He was not Arab but Ottoman(Turkish). 195.240.250.105 (talk) 18:22, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

His official name was Takiyuddin. 195.240.250.105 (talk) 22:31, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Stub and rework
For background information, please see RFC/U and Cleanup. With 164 edits, User:Jagged 85 is the main contributor to this article by far (2nd is User:Spacepotato who did cleanup work with 29 edits). The issues are a repeat of what had been exemplarily shown here, here, here or here. As the last pre-Jagged85 version (25 April 2007) is itself unreferenced I stubbed the article completely. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 19:12, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Removal of Inventions in the Muslim world
User Ruud explained once that the articles on "medieval Islam" follow the definition used by Medieval Islamic Civilization : An Encyclopaedia, Meri, Josef W. Meri and Bacharach, Jere L., Routledge, London 2006, ISBN 0415966906. The aforementioned reference states the following under the "Choice of Entries" section in the Introduction:


 * "The editorial board discussed the entries extensively, and certain additions and emendations were made to compensate for underrepresented themes. Unlike other volumes in this highly acclaimed Routledge series on the Middle Ages that are more geographically speciﬁc and are focused on the European Middle Ages from the ﬁfth through sixteenth centuries CE, Medieval Islamic Civilization posed a considerable challenge given the geographical expanse of the Islamic world, from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa to the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia from roughly the sixth through seventeenth centuries."

Hope it's clearer now. Al-Andalusi (talk) 06:14, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Clarification needed
Can someone clarify the last two sentences of what is the excessively long first paragraph: "For corroborating data of other observations of eclipses in other locale like Daud al-Riyyadi (David the Mathematician), David Ben-Shushan of Salonika. According to the Hapsburg ambassador, Salomon Schweigger a charlatan who deceived Sultan Murad III and had him spent enormous resources."

They are incomplete ideas and appear to need some verbs. Tsu Dho Nimh (talk) 11:37, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

List of possible sources for update
Ayduz, Salim. "Taqi Al-Din Ibn Ma’ruf: A Bio-Bibliographical Essay." Muslim Heritage. N.p., n.d. Web.

"Istanbul Observatory of Taqi Ad-Din." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 May 2014. Web. 24 May 2014.

"Saudi Aramco World : Arabs and Astronomy." Saudi Aramco World : Arabs and Astronomy. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2014.

One of the references is the Wikipedia page on the Istanbul Observatory. There is already a link to it on the page but I was thinking about adding a section on it.

Jongrnl (talk) 17:35, 24 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Make sure to add your talk entries to the bottom of the page. These are all good sources, but you might look around for still more.  I think you might exhaust the useful information here before getting through with your edits.  Thanks, Kirwanfan (talk) 20:05, 27 May 2014 (UTC)


 * What I was thinking about adding to this article was a section on the Istanbul observatory of Taqi ad-Din which already has a page of it's own but I feel deserves a section here. In 1574 Taqi ad-Din proposed the new observatory to the Sultan at the time and, being a fan of astronomy, was more then happy to be the patron of a new observatory in Istanbul. Taqi pointed out certain observation errors in the Ulug Bey Astronomical Tables and used this as reason to petition the government of the need for the new observatory. His observatory was said to resemble Tyco's in many respects. A few months after opening, on the first day of Ramadan, a comet appeared in the night sky. This was unfortunate timing as the current Sultan was about to march on Persia and his fathers death had been heralded by a comet. It sat in the night sky for 40 nights growing slowly brighter. With this in mind he asked Taqi to use the new observatory to figure out the meaning of the comet. Taqi noted that both the head and tail of the comet seemed to be pointing in the direction of Persia indicating that it was more of a bad omen for them and not for The Ottoman Empire. He also noted that the comet appeared in Sagittarius, which represented an Ottoman archer, and would set in Aquarius, which represented a time of peace. He strongly believed that this comet was a good sigh for the Sultan and the Ottoman Empire in their march against Persia. While their armies did do well a plague broke out at roughly the same time. This caused political pressure against continued funding of the observatory but the Sultan protected it until his death. In 1580, with out the Sultan to protect it, the observatory was torn down.
 * I was also thinking about redoing the sources section. There is a notes section, further reading section and an External link section but nothing that clams to be a work cited. Do you think this is something worth changing or is it OK as it is?

Jongrnl (talk) 20:18, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Peer Review
Great addition on the Istanbul Observatory. There is a lot of great information here for you to use. Would consider breaking up the long introduction. I think you could make a new section on the astronomical tables of the Kings of Kings as you have enough information. This would allow you to make the long intro more aesthetically pleasing while expanding on that issue.

Overall, good looking page. Expand where applicable (I don't know what you've found just yet) and add external links where appropriate.

Nickeckenrode (talk) 17:35, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

The information on the observatory looks great! I like the flow of it as it is really easy to follow and digest. It looks to me that this section accounts for about 2,600 bytes. If you have the information available to you, you could list ways in which ibn Ma'ruf and his observatory have impacted history, like as Nick said, the astronomical tables could have their own section. Also individual people that were influenced by him or built upon his works. Awesome work! JmFrioux (talk) 21:33, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Duplicate at Taghi-o-din Rased
There was a duplicate at Taghi-o-din Rased, which I redirected here. There may be a useful detail or two in the last version before redirection. Also, could someone with a working knowledge of Farsi take care of the same problem in the Farsi Wikipedia? Thanks, 85.178.204.220 (talk) 09:36, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Optics
Taqi al-Din did certainly not call his book "Takîyüddîn'in Optik Kitabi". I didn't research it but this information is enough. This is not Ottoman Turkish but 20th century Turkish. Thus it must be some new edition that is mentioned in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.2.251.36 (talk) 10:23, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

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What's the difference between "al-Din" vs. "ad-Din"?
The two seem to be used interchangeably in this article and elsewhere on the internet. Perhaps one or the other should be chosen and adopted consistently? –jacobolus (t) 21:14, 24 May 2023 (UTC)