Whatever Hamas believes, Muslim-Jewish conflict is neither timeless nor inevitable. One piece of evidence of vibrant cultural and intellectual interactions between devotees of these two faiths is an 11th-century astrolabe—a gizmo used for making complex geographic and astronomic calculations that was popular with medieval scientists. Examining this particular astrolabe at a museum in Verona, Italy, the historian Frederica Gigante recently detected Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions. Cambridge University reports:
“This isn’t just an incredibly rare object. It’s a powerful record of scientific exchange between Arabs, Jews, and Christians over hundreds of years,” said Dr. Gigante. “The Verona astrolabe underwent many modifications, additions, and adaptations as it changed hands. At least three separate users felt the need to add translations and corrections to this object, two using Hebrew and one using a Western language.”
The [Arabic] signature inscribed on the astrolabe reads, “for Isḥāq [. . .]/ the work of Yūnus.” This was engraved sometime after the astrolabe was made, probably for a later owner. The two names, Isḥāq and Yūnus (Isaac and Jonah in English), could be Jewish names written in the Arabic script, a detail that suggests that the object was at a certain point circulating within a Jewish community in Spain, where Arabic was the spoken language.
Hebrew inscriptions were added to the astrolabe by more than one hand. . . . Gigante said, “These Hebrew additions and translations suggest that at a certain point, the object left Spain or North Africa and circulated among the Jewish diaspora community in Italy, where Arabic was not understood, and Hebrew was used instead.”
Gigante points out that these translations reflect the recommendations prescribed by the Spanish Jewish polymath Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–1167) in the earliest surviving treatise on the astrolabe in the Hebrew language written in 1146 in Verona, exactly where the astrolabe is found today.
Read more on Phys.org: https://phys.org/news/2024-03-rare-eleventh-century-astrolabe-discovery.html