The Devil's Delusion

and now a question: Does the Koran commend the study
of the natural world? And an answer: It does. “At the last
Judgment,” the Turkish devout Said Nursî remarked, “the ink
spent by scholars is equal to the blood of martyrs.” But those
scholars celebrated at the last judgment were apt to be schol-ars of religion and so bound by the inerrancy of the Koran.
“Allah turns over the night and the day,” reads a well-known
Koranic verse, “most surely there is a lesson in this for those
who have sight” (24.44). It is hardly surprising that Moslem
mathematicians and astronomers, from the late seventh to the
early fifteenth century, regarded their scientific curiosity, on
those occasions when they were called upon to justify it, as if
their scientific pursuits comprised an exercise calculated to
increase their devotion.

During the living centuries of the Arab empire, a magnifi-
cent series of stellar observatories glittered like jewels
throughout the archipelago of its conquests. The observatory
played an important role in the religious life of devout Mos-
lems. It was not—it was never —the expression of disinterested
curiosity. More so than either Jews or Christians, men of the
Moslem faith were called upon carefully to mark the schedule
of their devotions. The art devoted to such concerns was known
as the ilm al-miqât.And an art it was. During the Middle Ages,
the Moslem world, for all its luxury and sophistication, had no
more access to sophisticated clocks than the Christian world,
and in the Christian West, men kept time so carelessly that
even the arrival of the Easter holidays was a matter of pro-
found uncertainty.