Abū al‐ʿUqūl


Abū al‐ʿUqūl Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al‐Ṭabarī was a leading astronomer in Ta'izz and the first teacher of astronomy at the Muʾayyadiyya Madrasa. Of Iranian origin, he is known for compiling the largest single corpus of tables for astronomical timekeeping in a specific latitude during medieval times, with over 100,000 entries. Another interesting feature of his work was determining the latitude of Ta'izz as 13° 37'.

Life

His epithet al-Tabarī suggests that he or his family stemmed from Tabaristan, a region in northern Iran. He lived in Yemen during the time of the Rasulid Sultan al-Ashraf Umar II and was contemporary to another famous astronomer Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al‐Fārisī.

Works