The intellectual legacy of the brilliant metallurgist Ali Kashmiri Ibn Luqman

by Guest Sat Jan 06, 2018 4:34 pm

In 1980s when a British researcher Emilie Savage-Smith discovered a metallic Seamless Celestial Globe created by Ali Kashmiri Ibn Luqman, it completely shook the engineering world. Till that time metallurgists thought that such a sphere was impossible to create.

Even in 20th century with huge advances in science and technology, engineers were unable to make a seamless sphere, but Luqman had mastered the art way back in 1589 AD in his non-descript workshop somewhere in Kashmir.

The year 2014 celebrates the 425th year of one of the greatest metallurgists of Kashmir but in his home state hardly anybody knows about Luqman, let alone his invention.

Celestial sphere is an imaginary sphere that represents how the entire sky looks as seen from earth. “Just imagine that the entire visible sky is turned into a dome around you and the stars are engraved on it. That makes the celestial globe,” said Seemin Rubab, Professor National Institute of Technology, Hazratbal.

“Unlike the ordinary globe that represents earth, the celestial globe represents sky complete with stars and constellations on it. It was a practical tool in astronomy that allowed astronomers to position objects in the sky.”

The celestial spheres have been made since thousands of years, starting from Greek and Romans. “What makes Luqman’s sphere special is that it is a seamless one. Without any aid of modern machinery he had succeeded in carving a sphere without any joints and for engineers that is mindboggling even now,” said Rubab.

Luqman had perfected the lost-wax casting method of Mughals to carve out the sphere in a single unit. “The wax casting method was there, but it was Luqman who perfected it to create a hollow sphere,” said Rubab.

These globes are usually used for some astronomical or astrological calculations or as pieces of ornaments. In coastal areas they were also used to teach celestial navigation to the seafaring people.

www.storypick.com considers Seamless Metal Sphere by Luqman as one of the 20 clever inventions that came from the Indian subcontinent.

Sheikh Fayaz Ahmad, author of ‘Unsung Innovators of Kashmir’, terms Luqman as an innovator with a global impact. “Luqman’s invention is considered to be one of the most remarkable feats in metallurgy and engineering,” said Fayaz. “Authors in Europe and America have acknowledged his work and there are so many research papers referring to his work. This also shows that Luqman was multi talented as he knew metallurgy, engineering, astronomy and the arithmetic,” he said.

From Kashmir Luqman’s craft found its way to Lahore as both places were under the Mughal rule. It was in Lahore that Muhammad Salih Tahtawi built the most prolific and largest celestial spheres based on the Luqman’s method. The sphere built in 1665 has inscriptions in both Arabic and Persian. The spheres continued to be built at Lahore up to 1850s until the arrival of British Empire.

Rubab says that 20 such globes were made by Luqman. “One adorns the Albert Museum in London and another is a prized possession of Smithsonian museum in USA,” said Rubab. "I am not sure if we have any such globe in Kashmir."

It is a fact that all globes before and after the ones created with Luqman’s method were seamed as they were produced by joining two halves.

There is one globe of this era in Kashmir, which experts think is a seamless one with Persian inscriptions but nobody knows for sure about its origin. “We have one such globe. Earlier it was with museum of Central Asian Studies, but now it has been transferred to SPS Museum but we are not sure who has made it,” said Mohammad Shafi Zahid, Deputy Director, Archives and Museums.

Experts at Central Asian Museum also don't have any conclusive evidence. “The globe that was with us was bereft of any reference to Ali Kashmiri and there is variation in time period too, so it needs to be probed,” said Prof Aijaz Banday from Central Asian Studies.

Fayaz lamented over the fact that in his home state Luqman is almost unknown. “His creation tells a lot about that era. Astronomy and metallurgy must have been flourishing and somebody must have patronized Luqman,” said Fayaz. “Unfortunately in Kashmir no research is being undertaken on Luqman.”

In its 425th year experts feel that the role of innovators like Luqman should be highlighted in the state. “There is a dire need of making people aware of their history,” said Fayaz, “At least this year government or the university should come forward to research, debate and honour Luqman. It is a pity that we even don’t know anything about his life and other innovations.”

http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/gk-magazine/celebrating-luqman-s-celestial-sphere/165309.html

by Guest Sat Jan 06, 2018 4:45 pm

In the largest painting to have emerged from the Mughal period, emperor Jahangir (the name means ‘world-seizer’) is seen holding a globe in his right palm. It is believed that this globe was constructed by the metallurgist Muhammad Salih Tahtawi. He was famed for the impossible feat of constructing seamless hollow spheres, leaving no tell-tale cavity or crease from its making.

Seventeenth century astrolabe makers in Lahore appear to have excelled in this method, called the ‘cire perdue’ (lost wax), a technique which is now lost to history. Emilie Savage-Smith writes in a detailed study that “seamlessly cast globes continued to be made in Lahore up to the mid-19th century. In 1842, Lala Balhumal Lahuri, a Hindu maker of precision instruments made such a globe, inscribed in Arabic and Persian for his Sikh patron.” She adds that “no workshop today, anywhere in the world, knows how to do this and indeed the casting of seamless metal spheres is regarded as technically impossible”.

The purpose of these globes was to create a map of the night sky as it appeared to observers on Earth. Since the planets moved gently through the sky, but the stars remained fixed in their positions every night — it was thought for a long time that they were attached to something solid — like jewels inside a giant hollow sphere. “And we have adorned the nearest heaven with lamps,” says one translation of the Q’uran.

Numerous fantastical visions of Earth’s shape and place in the universe have been proposed and discarded since antiquity. Such as Anaximenes of Miletus (sixth century BC), who held that “the Earth was a cylinder three times as wide as high, and that it was surrounded by three concentric rings carrying the fixed stars, the Moon, and the Sun.” Even when the cylinder was discarded for a sphere, “This system of a spherical Earth surrounded by concentric spheres of water, air, fire, and then the spheres of the heavenly bodies remained the basis for cosmology and physics for the next two millennia.” (Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe).

As late as 1692, the famous astronomer Edmund Halley erroneously proposed that the Earth was “a hollow shell about 800 km (500 miles) thick, two inner concentric shells and an innermost core, about the diameters of the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Atmospheres separate these shells, and each shell has its own magnetic poles. The spheres rotate at different speeds…”

Great discoveries in astronomy were made despite the fact that these models were utterly wrong. Johannes Kepler found the laws of the planetary orbits even though he believed them to be moving within transparent, crystalline Platonic solids. These nested solids, according to his book Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596), are the scaffold that supports the movement of the orbs, a need which was later dismissed by an understanding of gravity.

Similar models of the solar system came down from the Greeks, and were passed on to the Arabs — who expanded and detailed this worldview. It is through Islamic writers, and not through Kepler — that the idea of solid spheres holding the orbits in place came to India and appears in 17th century Varanasi.

Two astronomers belonging to rival families, who went to war over this theory, are mentioned in Kim Plofker’s Mathematics In India. “The Islamic cosmological notions accepted by Kamalakara’s family or school included the concept of transparent “crystalline” celestial spheres for the physical support and impulsion of the orbiting bodies. Munisvara’s side objected to this idea on the grounds that such a material could not be strong enough for this purpose. If any such spheres existed, they would have to be made of metal, conforming to traditional Indian descriptions of the blue sky as a round metal surface. This debate and related controversies were continued between Kamalakara’s brother and Munisvara’s cousin in two treatises entitled Loha-gola-khandana (“Smashing of the Iron Spheres”) and Loha-gola-samarthana (“Vindication of the Iron Spheres”).”

Unusual here was the discussion about the strength of this material, since aspects of physics are not found often in Indian astronomy. Physically speaking, it could even be pondered whether such a large sphere would not collapse under its own gravity and become a planet itself.

The mystery of the spheres began to finally clear when astronomers such as Christoph Rothmann and Tycho Brahe studied comets that came from outside the solar system. The comet of 1585, observed Rothmann — was beyond Saturn and there was no refraction by any intervening material. The comets were travelling to the Sun completely unhindered by any invisible spheres, right through the planetary orbits — as if nothing at all existed over there, not even glass.

The fixed stars, we know now, are not arrayed like jewels on some finite celestial crown, but scattered like dust in a universe that may be infinitely large — a universe that would fit in the palm of no earthly emperor.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blink/explore/mystery-of-the-starry-sphere/article7742589.ece

The intellectual legacy of the brilliant metallurgist Ali Kashmiri Ibn Luqman

The intellectual legacy of the brilliant metallurgist Ali Kashmiri Ibn Luqman

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