Dr. Dohx's Description of an Arabic Celestial Globe. 377 



use of the king Adad Eddoula (of the race of the Buides), who had declared 

 himself independent, and had even established himself in Bagdad, where 

 nothing was left to the Khalif but the Imamut, or supreme ecclesiastical 

 dignity. 



We should, however, form but an imperfect judgment of the mechanical 

 skill of these learned men, if no instruments executed by them had reached 

 our time. This, fortunately, is not the case ; and the few that have been pre- 

 served must be looked upon as highly valuable monuments, illustrative not 

 only of the astronomical works written by Mohammedans, but also as fur- 

 nishing the means to enable us to judge accurately of their proficiency in the 

 science itself. Only three, or at the most four, of these globes are known to 

 have escaped the injuries of time ; and as the object of this essay is to give 

 an account of one of them, I have thought it proper to prefix a brief de- 

 scription of the others. 



Tlie first and oldest of these globes, of which a description has been given 

 to the public, belonged to the extensive and celebrated collection of antiqui- 

 ties and curiosities of the late Cardinal Borgia, at Velletri, in Italy. It was 

 made of brass in A.H. G^S (A.D. 1225) in Egypt, in the reign of king Al- 

 hamet, by Kaissar ben Abul Kasem ebn Musafer Elabiaki Alhanefi, as the 

 Cufic inscription intimates, and has been described by Simon Assemani, in 

 a work entitled •' Globus ccclestis Cufico-Arabicus Veliterni Musei Bor- 

 giani, a Simone Assemano (LL.Or. Prof) illustratus. Patav. 1790, 4to." But 

 although Assemani, being a native of the East, was thoroughly conversant 

 with the Arabic language, he could not avoid being sometimes greatly mis- 

 taken in the names of the stars, which he had to make out from a very bad 

 and inaccurate copy of the globe transmitted to him ; and his publication 

 must therefore be perused witii some caution. 



The second globe, also of brass, is deposited in the Astronomical Mu- 

 seum at Dresden, in Saxony, and was very accurately and skilfully illustrated 

 by Counsellor Beigel, in Bode's Astronomischem Jahrbuch for 1808. It was 

 constructed in the year 1289, by Mohammed ben Movajed Alardhi, an as- 

 tronomer at Hulagu Khan's court, at Maragha; and the characters engraven 

 on it apj)eai-, from a specimen given by Professor Ideler, to bear a strong 

 resemblance to those on the globe deposited in the museum of the Royal 

 Asiatic Society. 



The third globe, of rather a smaller size, and which I had an opportunity 

 of seeing and examining myself, was brought to England from India, and 



