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Description of the Celestial Globe belonging to Mqjor-General Sir John 

 MalcoltJi, G.C.B., K.L.S., <§r. S^c, deposited in the Museum of the Royal 

 Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. By Dr. Bernhard Dorn, 

 For.M.R.A.S. 



Read February 21, 1829. 



Amongst those sciences which, after a long interval of ignorance and 

 barbarity, were revived by the Mahomedan Arabs, astronomy ranks very 

 high ; and it cannot be denied, that had not the Arabs applied themselves to 

 it with great assiduity and zeal, and encouraged all that served to promote its 

 dissemination and advancement, after it had remained almost totally forgot- 

 ten from the time of Ptolemy, the application to its study would, perhaps, 

 never have extended over so large a portion of the globe as it has done. 

 Although the pagan inhabitants of Arabia, before the time of Islamism, were 

 in the habit of observing the stars, many of which they knew, and denomi- 

 nated by names taken from pastoral life, and several of which they even 

 worshipped as visible gods, yet of a scientific knowledge of astronomy 

 among them no traces can be discovered. The revival, therefore, of this 

 celestial science, was principally attributable to their Mahomedan successors, 

 who introduced its study into Arabia, at a time when the counti'ies around 

 them were immersed in the most deplorable state of mental darkness, which 

 could only be dissipated by slow degrees. 



We know that, in the middle of the thirteenth century, astronomy was so 

 little attended to in the Greek empire, that Chionides of Constantinople, 

 being desirious of becoming acquainted with the celestial sphere, was com- 

 pelled to travel into Persia to gratify his desire. The Persians, according to 

 his statement, were at that time so jealous of their acquirements in astro- 

 nomy, (in consequence of a prophecy current amongst them, that the Chris- 

 tians would overthrow their empire by means derived from a knowledge of 

 it), that it was strictly forbidden to initiate any stranger into its mysteries ; 

 and the Greek sage, notwithstanding the strong recommendations he had 



