Mohammad al-Rudani | |
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 Authorship cartouche on al-Rudani's astrolabe | |
| Born | Muhammad ibn Sulayman al‐Fasi ibn Tahir al‐Rudani al‐Susi c. 1627 Taroudant, Morocco |
| Died | October 31, 1683 (aged 55–56) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields |
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Muhammad al-Rudani (Arabic: محمد بن سليمان الروداني)[a] (c. 1627 – 1683) was a Moroccan polymath who was active as an astronomer, grammarian, jurist, logician, mathematician and poet.
Al-Rudani was born in c. 1627 in Taroudant. He was of Shilha origin.[1] After studying in his hometown at the Great Mosque of Taroudant and its Madrasa, he continued his studies in the Zaouia Nasiriyya under Mohammed ibn Nasir for four years, the Zaouia of Dila, in Marrakesh and in Fez.[2] His teachers in Morocco were: the theologian Isa al-Sugtani (d.1651), the chronologist Muhammad ibn Said al-Marghiti (d. 1679), and the grammarian Muhammad al-Murabit al-Dilai' (d. 1678).[3] Afterwards, he left to study in the Islamic east. Thus, in the early 1650s, he stayed in Algiers, where he studied under the logician Said ibn Ibrahim Qaddura.[3] In Egypt and the Levant, he studied under Ali al-Ajhuri, Shihab al-Din al-Khafaji, Shihab al-Din al-Qaliyubi, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Shubri, al-Shaikh Sultan, Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, Muhammad al-Naqib ibn Hamza al-Hasani and Ibn Balban. He got an ijazah from all of these scholars.[4] He spent most of his life in Ottoman territories. He is especially well known for the invention of a spherical device into which another sphere (painted blue) with a different axis was placed. This second sphere was divided into two parts in which the zodiacal signs with their sections and regions were drawn.
He died in Damascus on October 31, 1683.[5]
Some of his works are:[6]
