Al-Battani

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Jābir ibn Sinān al-Raqqī al-Ḥarrānī aṣ-Ṣābiʾ al-Battānī) gives: Abū Jāfar Muḥammad ibn Sinān ibn Jābir al-Harranī, known as al-Battānī, }} (), usually called al-Battānī, a name that was in the past Latinized as Albategnius,}} (before 858929) was an astronomer, astrologer, geographer and mathematician, who lived and worked for most of his life at Raqqa, now in Syria. He is considered to be the greatest and most famous of the astronomers of the medieval Islamic world.

Al-Battānī's writings became instrumental in the development of science and astronomy in the west. His (), is the earliest extant (astronomical table) made in the Ptolemaic tradition that is hardly influenced by Hindu or Sasanian astronomy. Al-Battānī refined and corrected Ptolemy's ''Almagest'', but also included new ideas and astronomical tables of his own. A handwritten Latin version by the Italian astronomer Plato Tiburtinus was produced between 1134 and 1138, through which medieval astronomers became familiar with al-Battānī. In 1537, a Latin translation of the was printed in Nuremberg. An annotated version, also in Latin, published in three separate volumes between 1899 and 1907 by the Italian Orientalist Carlo Alfonso Nallino, provided the foundation of the modern study of medieval Islamic astronomy.

Al-Battānī's observations of the Sun led him to understand the nature of annular solar eclipses. He accurately calculated the Earth's obliquity (the angle between the planes of the equator and the ecliptic), the solar year, and the equinoxes (obtaining a value for the precession of the equinoxes of one degree in 66 years). The accuracy of his data encouraged Nicolaus Copernicus to pursue ideas about the heliocentric nature of the cosmos. Al-Battānī's tables were used by the German mathematician Christopher Clavius in reforming the Julian calendar, and the astronomers Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei and Edmund Halley all used Al-Battānī's observations.

Al-Battānī introduced the use of sines and tangents in geometrical calculations, replacing the geometrical methods of the Greeks. Using trigonometry, he created an equation for finding the (the direction which Muslims need to face during their prayers). His equation was widely used until superseded by more accurate methods, introduced a century later by the polymath al-Biruni. Provided by Wikipedia