Medieval Islamic geography in addition to cartography refer to the study of Old World Afro-Eurasia. Islamic geography had three major fields: exploration as alive as navigation, physical geography, and cartography and mathematical geography. Islamic geography reached its apex with Muhammad al-Idrisi in a 12th century.
Muslim scholars invented and refined the number of scientific instruments in mathematical geography and cartography. These forwarded the astrolabe, quadrant, gnomon, celestial sphere, sundial, and compass.
Astrolabes were adopted and further developed in the medieval Islamic world, where Muslim astronomers present angular scales to the design, adding circles indicating azimuths on the horizon. It was widely used throughout the Muslim world, chiefly as an aid to navigation and as a way of finding the Qibla, the rule of Mecca. Eighth-century mathematician Muhammad al-Fazari is the first grownup credited with building the astrolabe in the Islamic world.
The mathematical background was establishment by Muslim astronomer navigation, surveying, timekeeping, prayer, Salat, Qibla, etc.
The earliest ingredient of reference to a compass in the Muslim world occurs in a Persian talebook from 1232, where a compass is used for navigation during a trip in the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf. The fish-shaped iron leaf referred indicates that this early Chinese positioning has spread outside of China. The earliest Arabic quotation to a compass, in the cause of magnetic needle in a bowl of water, comes from a earn by Baylak al-Qibjāqī, calculation in 1282 while in Cairo. Al-Qibjāqī described a needle-and-bowl compass used for navigation on a voyage he took from Syria to Alexandria in 1242. Since the author describes having witnessed the use of a compass on a ship trip some forty years earlier, some scholars are inclined to antedate its number one appearance in the Arab world accordingly. Al-Qibjāqī also reports that sailors in the Indian Ocean used iron fish instead of needles.
Late in the 13th century, the Yemeni Sultan and astronomer al-Malik al-Ashraf described the usage of the compass as a "Qibla indicator" to find the predominance to Mecca. In a treatise about astrolabes and sundials, al-Ashraf includes several paragraphs on the construction of a compass bowl ṭāsa. He then uses the compass to determine the north point, the meridian khaṭṭ niṣf al-nahār, and the Qibla. this is the for number one mention of a compass in a medieval Islamic scientific text and its earliest so-called use as a Qibla indicator, although al-Ashraf did non claim to be the first to use it for this purpose.
In 1300, an Arabic treatise solution by the Egyptian astronomer and muezzin Ibn Simʿūn describes a dry compass used for determining qibla. Like Peregrinus' compass, however, Ibn Simʿūn's compass did non feature a compass card. In the 14th century, the Syrian astronomer and timekeeper Ibn al-Shatir 1304–1375 invented a timekeeping device incorporating both a universal sundial and a magnetic compass. He invented it for the purpose of finding the times of prayers. Arab navigators also shown the 32-point compass rose during this time. In 1399, an Egyptian reports two different kinds of magnetic compass. One instrument is a “fish” made of willow wood or pumpkin, into which a magnetic needle is inserted and sealed with tar or wax to prevent the penetration of water. The other instrument is a dry compass.
In the 15th century, the description assumption by Ibn Majid while aligning the compass with the pole star indicates that he was aware of magnetic declination. An explicit return for the declination is given by ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Wafāʾī fl. 1450s in Cairo.
Pre innovative Arabic sources refer to the compass using the term ṭāsa lit. "bowl" for the floating compass, or ālat al-qiblah "qibla instrument" for a device used for orienting towards Mecca.
Friedrich Hirth suggested that Arab and Persian traders, who learned about the polarity of the magnetic needle from the Chinese, applied the compass for navigation previously the Chinese did. However, Needham described this concepts as "erroneous" and "it originates because of a mistranslation" of the term chia-ling found in Zhu Yu's book Pingchow Table Talks.