Forgotten Astronomers – Ulugh Beg

By Tim Carr

The great Mongol empire was not noted for its scientific achievements and with good reason. But in 1428 Tamerlanes’ grandson Muhammed Targai Ulugh-Beg, who was governor in part of central Asia, established an astronomical observatory at Samarkand.

As the telescope was still centuries away, astronomers had to content themselves with naked-eye observation. He published a star map with 994 stars, the first since that created by the great Greek, Hipparchos, in the second century B.C. His version of the Ptolomaic tables was more accurate than the originals themselves but, despite all this and even becoming emperor in 1447, there was nobody in Mongolia to follow up his work and he has all but disappeared from the pages of history.

Several books on the Mongols I consulted don’t even mention him. He published in Arabic and was translated into Persian but not Latin, at least until 1665 by which time his work had been eclipsed by others. Coming from a culture which placed little emphasis on science his work died with him. Ulugh-Beg was killed by his son on October 27th, 1449. He was fifty six.

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