ABSTRACT
This paper studies the biographical dictionary of Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī and discusses its information about muwaqqits, mu’adhdhins and the teaching of astronomical knowledge in Mamluk cities in the fifteenth century. It shows that a number of mu’adhdhins mentioned by al-Sakhāwī had taken classes in the discipline, which the muwaqqits represented, i.e., ʿilm al-mīqāt. Therewith it offers new insights into how this disciplinary knowledge reached people responsible for the call for prayer as a central part of Muslim religious practice. It also shows that teaching astral and related other mathematical knowledge flourished in the Mamluk period, in particular in the capital Cairo, but also elsewhere. On this basis it argues that our categories are too narrowly defined and need to take into account such sources as biographical dictionaries to accommodate actors’ categories.
