Maragha School
School of astronomers at the Maragha Observatory who developed alternatives to Ptolemaic astronomy.
Who or what
Founded by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in 1259 in northwestern Persia, the Maragha school produced revolutionary astronomical models.
The observatory housed a library of 400,000 volumes and instruments including a 6-meter sextant.
Why it mattered
The Tusi couple — two circles where one rolls inside the other — generated linear motion from circular motion.
This resolved a key problem in Ptolemy's models and influenced Copernicus directly.
Key works and moments
Al-Tusi's planetary models eliminated the equant point that violated uniform circular motion.
Ibn al-Shatir's models for the Moon and planets were mathematically identical to Copernicus' later models.
Further detail
The Maragha school's innovations: universal solutions replacing ad-hoc Ptolemaic devices, physical reality as criterion, mathematical consistency.
Copernicus likely encountered these ideas through Byzantine Greek translations circulating in Italy.
Legacy
The Maragha school bridged Islamic and European astronomy — their models directly influenced the Copernican revolution.
The observatory model influenced later institutions like Ulugh Beg's Samarkand observatory and Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg.
More in Islamic Golden Age
Assembled from the ReLU.chat curated knowledge base. These explanations are concise on purpose; check the sources for anything important.