Abu Hamid Ahmed ibn Mohammed al-Saghani al-Asturlabi (Persian:ابوحامد صاغانی, referred to by at least one source asṢāghānī,^[1] was aPersian astronomer andhistorian of science. His name means "theastrolabe maker of Saghan, nearMerv". He flourished inBaghdad, where he died in 990.

Al-Asturlabi wrote some of the earliest comments on thehistory of science. These included the following comparison between the "ancients" (including the ancientBabylonians,Egyptians,Greeks andIndians) and the "modern scholars" (theMuslim scientists of his time):

"The ancients distinguished themselves through their chance discovery of basic principles and the invention of ideas. The modern scholars, on the other hand, distinguish themselves through the invention of a multitude of scientific details, the simplification of difficult (problems), the combination of scattered (information), and the explanation of (material which already exists in) coherent (form). The ancients came to their particular achievements by virtue of their priority in time, and not on account of any natural qualification and intelligence. Yet, how many things escaped them which then became the original inventions of modern scholars, and how much did the former leave for the latter to do."

— Rosenthal, 1950

• Puig, Roser (2007)."Ṣāghānī: Abū Ḥāmid Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al‐Ṣāghānī [al‐Ṣaghānī] al‐Asṭurlābī". In Thomas Hockey; et al. (eds.).The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. New York: Springer. p. 1004.ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. (PDF version)
• Rosenthal, Franz (1950)."Al-Asturlabi and as-Samaw'al on Scientific Progress".Osiris.9:555–564.doi:10.1086/368538.S2CID 224796639.

• Hogendijk, Jan P. (2001)."The Contributions by Abū Naṣr ibn ʿIrāq and al‐Ṣāghānī to the Theory of Seasonal Hour Lines on Astrolabes and Sundials"(PDF).Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften.14:1–30.
• Suter, Heinrich (1900).Die Mathematiker und Astronomen der Araber. Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der mathematischen Wissenschaften mit Einschluss ihrer Anwendungen,10. HFT. (in German). Leipzig: B.G. Teubner. p. 65.OCLC 463208459.

• Mathematicians from the Abbasid Caliphate
• Astronomers from the Abbasid Caliphate
• 10th-century Iranian mathematicians
• 990 deaths
• Historians of science
• 10th-century Iranian astronomers
• 10th-century people from the Abbasid Caliphate

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