Description
La mère et le trône d’une seule pièce, comprenant l’araignée, l’essieu, l’alidade, le cheval, et un jeu de quatre tympans provenant d’un même ensemble mais associés à la mère, la mère sans buttée, finement ciselé sur ses deux faces, le revers du trône portant la date de 1112 H / 1700-01, la signature apocryphe d‘Abd al-‘Ali indiqué dans un médaillon au centre, l’araignée ciselée des noms du zodiaque, les pointeurs animés de têtes d’animaux, le cheval maintenant l’ensemble en forme d’animal, tâches, bon état général.
Dim. : 16,9 cm (haut. sans la bélière) ; 18,5 cm (plus grande hauteur) ; 12,1 cm (diam.) ; 0,7 cm (épaisseur) ; 10,2 cm (diam. tympans).
Collection particulière française
Puis par descendance, collection particulière parisienne, 1999
This brass astrolabe bears the signature of ʿAbd al-ʿAli, a renowned astrolabe maker active during the Safavid period. One of his astrolabes, dated 1119 AH / 1707–08, is preserved at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford (inv. no. 40330) and bears close similarities to the present example. The instrument belongs to a type developed in Iran from the late sixteenth century onwards. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Iranian astrolabes became increasingly ornate, as illustrated by the present example, and the maker was often assisted by a specialist in chasing and decorative metalwork. The proliferation of astrolabes during the Safavid period, several examples of which have survived, reflects the court’s keen interest in astrology. This fascination was notably recorded by the celebrated French traveller Jean Chardin (Maddison, Francis, and Emilie Savage-Smith, Science, Tools & Magic, The Nour Foundation, 1997, vol. I, p. 248).
Although the present astrolabe is non-functional, it was nevertheless produced by a skilled craftsman. It lacks a retaining stop to hold the plates in position, while the chased decoration precludes the accurate performance of calculations. It bears similarities to a non-functional astrolabe in the Khalili Collection in London, made in Iran after 1778. The catalogue entry for the Khalili Collection records the observations of a European traveller, A. Krziz, who noted in 1805 the large number of non-functional astrolabes produced in Tehran for an Iranian clientele that liked to ‘have an astrolabe at hand although they understood nothing of how it worked’ (op. cit., cat. 148, p. 234). The present astrolabe maker, ʿAbd al-ʿAli, together with another maker named ʿAbd al-Aʾimma, was among the most frequently copied astrolabe makers during the Qajar period (op. cit., cat. 147, p. 252).
