Maryam al-'Ijiliyah and Maryam al-Asturlabi are two modern names for a woman who lived and worked in astronomical technology during the Golden Age of the Islamic civilization: roughly speaking, the Abbasid caliphate (750-1258 CE). Sparse traces of her existence are found from one contemporary source, the Kitab al-Fihrist ("index"), first published in 987. This source is a veritable encyclopedia of Medieval scholars and studies active in the Islamic community and around the globe between the 8th and 10th centuries, and Maryam's spare entry within that encyclopedia has given scholars the opportunity to build out what her working environment was like.

What can be interpreted from al-Fihrist is that sometime during the second half of the 10th century CE (or the 4th century of the Hijri calendar typically abbreviated AH), a Muslim woman in the capital city of Aleppo made astrolabes. In al-Fihrist, she is called al-'Ijiliyah, and she was the daughter of another astrolabe maker, al-'Ijili al-Asturlabi. Her father was apprenticed to a man referred to as Betulus, and his daughter was a pupil of that same man. Al-'Ijiliyah was adept enough at her profession to be chosen to work for the Hamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla, who ruled in Aleppo from 944-967 CE / 333-356 AH).

What's an Astrolabe?

Astrolabe constructed by Ahmad ibn Khalaf of Djaraf, son of Moktafi Billah, 294-377 AH (905-987 CE). Bibliothèque nationale de France, GE A-324. 13 x 19 cm. Public domain
Astrolabe constructed by Ahmad ibn Khalaf of Djafar, son of Moktafi Billah, 294-377 AH (905-987 CE). Bibliothèque nationale de France, GE A-324. 13 x 19 cm.


Briefly, astrolabes are teaching devices and technical instruments for studying the timing and progress of celestial bodies in the sky. They consist of two parts enclosed in a frame: a celestial part, with pointers for significant stars and a ring representing the path of the sun around the earth — well, okay, no, the sun doesn't go around the earth, but from a certain point of view, sure it does. The second part is a terrestrial part, including a selection of disks for swapping out information depending on what latitude you wish to study. Think of it as a two-dimensional representation of the celestial sphere, part slide rule and part ViewMaster. They are beautiful, complicated, and precisely engineered out of copper or brass. From the start, as you might imagine, they were collector's items as well.

Astrolabes were invented about the second century BCE of classical Greece, and adopted and adapted by Muslim scholars beginning in the 7th century CE. The Islamic civilization used them for critical assistance with sailing navigation, to predict eclipses, to determine the direction of Mecca, and to plan for specific prayers and rituals, among many other things.

Extrapolating Maryam

In a chapter for the 2023 source book Women in the History of Science, literary historian Shazia Jagot explains that Ijili was Maryam's family name and the name "Asturlabi" is a familiar name ("laqab") indicating that its possessor was a well-known astrolabe-maker. Modern-day references to the daughter often refer to her as Mariam or Maryam al-Ijili al-Asturlabi.

Jagot reports that the name "Betulus" refers to Muhammad ibn Abd-Allah al-Nastalus, an innovative astronomer who made one of the earliest surviving astrolabes. Nastulus was active in Baghdad between about 890 and 930 CE. Referring to Maryam as a "pupil" suggests that she might have been at an early stage of learning the intricate, detailed, and gloriously complex scientific work required for her craft under Nastulus. It seems likely, then, that Mariam was born in Baghdad during the first half of the 10th century, and lived into the mid-century when she went to work in the palace of Sayf al-Dawla, the patron of al-Nastulus.

School of Sayf al-Dawla

The Fortress of Aleppo, where Sayf al-Dawla resided after his main palace was destroyed in a battle. Uploaded by Vyacheslav Argenberg in 2009. CC 4.0.
The Fortress of Aleppo, where Sayf al-Dawla resided after his main palace was destroyed in a battle. Uploaded by Vyacheslav Argenberg in 2009. CC 4.0.


The court of Sayf al-Dawla (the "Sword of the State"), where Maryam was employed, was a major center of astronomical and mathematical education in the mid-10th century. The amir hired eminent poets, philologists, theologians, philosophers, and astronomers. Translators and manuscripts were brought in from many different societies to assist with creating Arabic versions of texts from around the world. Among the important work taking place there was the creation of a satisfactory Arabic translation of Ptolemy's Almagest. This was accomplished by (among others) the professional astronomer and astrologer 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Qabisi (d. 967), and the esteemed philosopher Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi, known as Alpharabius to the Latin west (d. 951). The Almagest translation was the climax of generations of scholarly work.
Al-Farabi. Alpharabius phus. Liber Chronicarum. Uploaded by Mr. Nostalgic. Public domain.
Al-Farabi. Alpharabius phus. Liber Chronicarum. Uploaded by Mr. Nostalgic. Public domain.


At Aleppo, al-Farabi and al-Qabisi separately worked on reviving the ancient sciences and professionalizing its practitioners. Al-Qabisi was of the opinion that there were too many dilettante astronomers and astrologers at the court, and so devised exams to discover what level of competence each had attained. Al-Qabisi made the explicit distinction between astronomy (the science of the motion of celestial bodies) and astrology (the science of their influence on the sublunar world), a difference not stressed in pre-Islamic periods. Maryam's work was on astrolabes, a significant tool of the astrologer. Since she appears in al-Fihrist, we might surmise that Maryam passed her exams.

Project Takeaways

Asteroid Al-'Ijliya is a mid-sized asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in the main portion of the asteroid belt. Named after the esteemed astrolabe-maker, the asteroid was discovered by Henry E. Holt at Palomar Observatory in 1990. The naming citation was published on 14 November 2016 (M.P.C. 102252)
Asteroid Al-'Ijliya is a mid-sized asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter in the main portion of the asteroid belt. Named after the esteemed astrolabe-maker, the asteroid was discovered by Henry E. Holt at Palomar Observatory in 1990. The naming citation was published on 14 November 2016 (M.P.C. 102252).


The story of Maryam al-Ilji al-Astrulabi takes place during the Golden Age when the Islamic civilization was rescuing and rebuilding science lost after Rome fell. Swiss historian and astronomer Johannes Thomann has termed the period as "the second revival" of astronomy in the 10th century, when Aleppo was one of a great number of new intellectual centers in the Islamic world. It was during this period when the Islamic astronomers and astrologers translated texts, reproduced lost Greek technologies, and took the discovered technologies to higher and more complex forms.

Al-Iljiyah's specific efforts to assist in this project are undocumented; but the laboratory of experiment and education at al-Dawla's court must have been exhilarating.

Figure Sources


Bibliographic Sources

  • Akhmetova, Elmira. "Women in Islamic Civilisation: Their Rights and Contributions." ICR Journal, vol. 7, no. 4, 2016, pp. 476–91, doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.52282/icr.v7i4.230
  • Bianquis, Th. "Sayf Al-Dawla." Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by P.J. Bearman, 2ns ed., Brill, 2012, https://referenceworks.brill.com/view/entries/EIEO/COM-1010.xml
  • Fadllurrahman, Moh. and Moh. Ilham Wahyudi. "The Astrolabe as a Meeting Point of Science, Art, and Religion: An Analysis of an Instrument for Navigation, Determining Prayer Times, and the Qibla Direction." Proceedings of International Conference of Islamic Studies (ICONIS 2025), Atlantis Press, 2025–09–21T05:00:00.000Z 2025, pp. 173–91. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-464-8_13
  • Hergul, Nurullah. "A Local Leader in the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier: ’Alī Sayf Al-Dawlah of Ḥamdān." M.A., Indiana University, 2019.
  • Hernández Pérez, Azucena. "Art, Science, and Technology in the Medieval Mediterranean:The Case of the Astrolabes in Al-Andalus and the Middle East." Europe and the Orient, vol. 1, 2023, pp. 15–26.
  • Ibn al-Nadim, Muhammad ibn Ishaq. "Kitab Al-Fihrist, Volume 1." The Fihrist of al-Nadim, edited by Bayard Dodge, translated by Bayard Dodge, vol. 1, Columbia University Press, 1969 (987). https://archive.org/details/fihristofalnadim0000unse/
  • Ibn al-Nadim, Muhammad ibn Ishaq "Kitab Al-Fihrist, Volume 2." The Fihrist of al-Nadim, edited by Bayard Dodge, translated by Bayard Dodge, vol. 2, Columbia University Press, 1970 (987). The Fihrist of al-Nadim; a tenth-century survey of Muslim culture, https://archive.org/details/fihristofalnadim0000ibna/
  • Jagot, Shazia. "Mariam Al-Ijli Al-Asturlabi (C. Tenth Century Ce): An Extract from Fihrist al-Nadim (Index)." Women in the History of Science: A Sourcebook, edited by Hannah Wills et al., UCL Press, 2023, pp. 61–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2w61bc7
  • King, David A. "Islamic Astronomical Instruments and Some Examples of Transmission to Europe." A Shared Legacy: Islamic Science East and West, edited by Emilia Calvo et al., Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2008, pp. 323–45.
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  • ---. " A Newly-Rediscovered Abbasid Astrolabe from Baghdad, Ca. 900." Suhayl : journal for the history of the exact and natural sciences in Islamic civilisation, vol. 11, 2020, p. 103.
  • Mamat, Mohmad Fadilah and Mohd Sholeh Sheh Yusuff. "Astrolabe Innovation and Its Chronological Development in Islamic Astronomy: A Historiographical Perspective." International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 15, no. 9, 2025, pp. 459–66.
  • Thomann, Johannes. "Astrolabes as Eclipse Computers: Four Early Arabic Texts on Construction and Use of the Ṣafīḥa Kusūfiyya." Medieval Encounters, vol. 23, no. 1-5, 2017, pp. 8–44, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12342242
  • ---. "The Second Revival of Astronomy in the Tenth Century and the Establishment of Astronomy as an Element of Encyclopedic Education." Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques, vol. 71, no. 3, 2017, pp. 907–57, doi: https://doi-org.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/10.1515/asia-2017-0052

A Few Blog Entries on Maryam


This article is part of the Staring into Space project.
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