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OTTOMAN ASTROLABE-QUADRANT. image 1
OTTOMAN ASTROLABE-QUADRANT. image 2
Lot 18

OTTOMAN ASTROLABE-QUADRANT.

21 September 2015, 13:00 EDT
New York

Sold for US$1,375 inc. premium

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OTTOMAN ASTROLABE-QUADRANT.

Turkey, dated 1296 AH [1878-79] signed "Rasamahu Mustafa," wood, 4¾ x 4", 6/8" thick, painted in red, black and gilt with sinecal quadrant and inscriptions, pivotal hole with later thread (used to provide loci of constant North polar distance), with 3 delicately inscribed cartouches in Turkish containing instructions on how to use the device in the winter or summer months. Housed in a later velvet-lined box.

An astrolabe-quadrant of the type devised in 1288 by the astronomer Jacob Tibbon ben Makir, better known as Profatius. The instrument, described in his Traité du Quadrant Moderne, is essentially an ingenious variant of the astrolabe, in which the instrument is reduced to a quarter circle, and the four quarters of the astrolabe are folded.

See Michel, Traité de l'Astrolabe. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1947, pp 22-24.

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