Astrolabe aka the original Smartwatch

Greek astrology was taught in the Middle East, where it was preserved when most of Europe started to forget about it. It was brought back to Europe in the Middle Ages through Islamic scriptures.

 

so heavy that I doubt it would’ve been made for tourist trade. If these ever were.
yup....all the time...... no pun intended..

 

only a Mod can delete a whole thread...

 

Don't delete it. Some other questing soul may find here the answer they've been searching for.

 

My dad was a metallurgist. I'm not, but did pick up some metal info through osmosis. Finn's astrolabe doesn't look all that old to me, or at least totally unused. Probably made as a decorative item for the early 70s "man cave" market is my guess. One easy way to tell is to see how easy it is to move. One made for a mariner would have a smooth action. Later decorative items just had to move; they weren't built to the same tolerances. One of my late dad's specialties was making stuff out of bronze that didn't have to be machined/fiddled with once it came out of the mold. It could just be dropped into place. The guys who made these for Arab sailors did the same thing, doubtless.

 

Yes, if it is around the home all the time, and you take an interest as a kid, you pick it up. My father also loved to explain things, and he did it well. So we had 'class' in a relaxed way, without even knowing it.
He was still alive when I had my bricks and mortar shop in the early 80s, and his knowledge was invaluable.

Very likely, although probably not man cave. Something to display together with those bronze nesting weights from Turkey and Greece.
Turkish metalware was probably exported to Finland around the same time as it was to us.

 

I don’t want to turn this into another rounded edge thread.
I think my photos lie. A lot.

I’m lousy at judging things by photos like the one poor one in my link. I don’t see the edge clearly enough to tell the difference.

In real life, mine looks remarkably similar to the one I posted as a comparable. To me.

The edge is rubbed smooth — tactile as AJ said. I can barely feel the ridges when running a nail along the edge. But I don’t have a degree in metallurgy, and don’t have any relatives who did. The astrolabe was picked up by my husband, who is a history buff and loves museums, especially military and maritime ones.

It weighs 861 grams — not something tourists traveling by plane in the seventies were likely to pick up. I wouldn't have.

You can move the different disks easily.

If you read the linked Smithsonian article, it specifically said astrolabes were made and used by regular people, not just mariners . Not fancy ones, but made out of wood even. BUT the use tapered out by the 18th C.

I’m really not trying to make it anything it isn’t. Like I said it has lathe marks — but so does the comparable. And I think the constellations look even sillier in it than in mine (see Gemini and the grimacing girl, Virgo?)

It wasn’t exported to Finland, it was picked up by the curio shop owners somewhere else.

The NYT stole their title, BTW, from the Smithsonian.
So did I, but I declared the theft.

 

That is true, and I never would have thought they were used by mariners. Muslims need to know the movements of the stars to calculate their special days. It is also very useful for trade caravans, especially across deserts and other scarcely populated terrain.

I'm sure it was exported to many parts of the world. I also came across at least one in Madrid's El Rastro flea market in the late 70s (my mother liked them).

 

I think it depends on a lot of things, branches and sects and interpretations of Quran. I don’t remember seeing humans or animals in Maghreb country art — maybe because they are mostly Sunnis and aniconism is common among fundamentalist Sunni sects. But that’s not something I know much about.

It just struck me as incongruous with the depiction of the comparable.

 

Let's give it another shot ! Hope one of these links works-
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiec...st-smartphone-say-scientists/?sh=7c42d39512d7
https://www.iflscience.com/1000-yea...nge-between-muslims-jews-and-christians-73220
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/100...istoric-cooperation-between-muslims-and-jews/

 

To clarify my point: since the astrolabes weren’t actually in use after the 18th C (according to the Smithsonian) but mostly displayed on the wall the way that a dentist would display a diploma, i.e. to show the person was knowledgeable enough to use it, it seems to me NONE made after that would show much actual wear.

If I understand you correctly, you see them still in use in the Muslim world much later?

 

@bosko69 — just typing “astrolabe New York Times” in Google finally worked for me.

 

Finn-YIPPEEE ! It's the real life version of 'People of the Book- piece of a lifetime (or countless lifetimes ).
I'm studying these images closely to get a feel of what very old or ancient means to the eye when encountering pieces.Natch,things can be faked-but you do yr best !

 

Yes, I did that too— looked also at the inner disks of the one they found. Some look fairly similar to the one I have. But so did the constellations then and now too…

Just for fun — the Gemini, I guess, from the one “comparable” to mine.

 

Found a twin of mine.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1369105947/vintage-astrolabe-navigation-maritime?click_key=ac16f84bbdbb407999ca10e78390619731f2bd2e:1369105947&click_sum=1946572f&ga_search_query=astrolabe&ref=shop_items_search_1&pro=1&frs=1

It has the same crude construction, spinning marks and simple inner discs, same ring and funny zodiac signs engraved on it.

Wikipedia knows astrolabes often had the name of the maker and the date written on it. Both of these have the same symbol ( letter?) but different numbers ( see top of the screenshot). This one has number one, mine nineteen. The year 1319 would be 1901 in the Gregorian calendar. Not that it means anything.

There are so many much, much prettier and more complex reproduction astrolabes (often without the inner discs) available on e.g. Etsy. that these must have had collectors in mind if recently made.

Below is a screenshot from the Etsy one.

 

It is brass, not platinum.
There is always wear on vintage and antique brass, whether you use it or not. If it is on the wall all its life, most of the wear will be on the back and the hanging loop as well as the hole it goes through. If it sits on a table all its life, most of the wear will be on the bottom. That is one of the reasons we ask for pictures of backs and bases.
And as you can see on both yours and the one in the link we discussed before, there is some wear around the outer rim. Yours doesn't have as much wear as the other one, and it doesn't have that tactile look, but some wear is visible. You said so yourself before, please don't go back on that now.

I must say, this argumentative attitude, in which you end up contradicting yourself and even use caps unnecessarily, is not my cup of tea.
First your astrolabe has to be older than we think and the wear is the same as on the other one, now there can't be any wear because it was on someone's wall. Such a clear contradiction leads to a sort of short-circuit thing in my brain, which I would rather not experience.

You said: "Any comments welcome!" and I posted mine.
My opinion was not a criticism of you or your item, it was simply based on experience. If it was anyone else's item, my opinion would be exactly the same. If it was my own item, my opinion would also be exactly the same.
Some items just aren't antique, no matter how much we like them, or how much we hope they look the same as an antique example. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy them, and I hope you do that even though it isn't antique.

I am not angry, but I am not going to stick around for the next contradiction 'for the sake of' or the next shouting caps, it is simply too much to process. You have my insight, take it or leave it, but I am out of this thread.

 

People usually resort to ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments when they run out of facts.

I was trying to ask about wear from actual use, not to be argumentative, but because our astrolabe was said to look “totally unused.” I was simply curious to know if astrolabes might have been in actual use as instruments by e.g. nomadic tribes much longer than the 18th century.

There is obviously a difference between wear from use as an instrument and as a curio.

You might also want to note that the astrolabe in first link I posted has a totally different outer rim than ours — a smooth one, since the circle with degrees(?) isn’t at the very edge. Ours is notched. I’d expect the tactile feel to be different.

As to wear in general--I bought a gold Victorian mourning brooch from Portobello Road in 1982, wore it a handful of times that year and never after. Whatever noticeable wear it had back then is still all it has now, since it’s been kept in its own jewelry box ever since. Similarly, our astrolabe has been sitting on wooden shelf in a curio cabinet, not having been taken out in years. If anything would show wear from rubbing, I’d expect that to be the shelf first, not the brass.

I was also trying to figure out when and where it might have made sense to make and/replicate this particular, heavy and rough-hewn kind of an astrolabe with a curious horse on the rule.

To me, sixties and even seventies just sounded like an odd time to do it anywhere in the Middle East/North Africa. It was before mass tourism and possibly even (large) Mediterranean cruises since lots of the cruise ships had been destroyed in the wars. Those were also the times of the oil crises, troubles between Turkey and Greece in Cyprus, very expensive flights, etc. Plus, a time when everything new and modern was in vogue, not musty old antiques. Unlike like e.g. in the late Victorian times when archeology was a big deal.

Learning that similar astrolabes had been found in the Netherlands and Madrid flea markets half a century ago didn’t really say much to me —unless they were bright and shiny and sold in great quantities and had a Made in Turkey sticker on them. If that was the case, it wasn’t disclosed.

I wouldn’t have replied here at all if I planned to stay. However, it doesn’t seem to matter how polite and respectful and factual I try to be, I’m still stepping on toes by simply asking matter-of-fact questions. All I’m getting – and perhaps giving-- are three day-migraines. I’m also too old to be lectured.

I’m therefore out of here. This is the last time I’m signing in, and I’m disabling all notifications.

 

Well, that didn't end well !