We live in a time of increasing polarization whether it be political or religious or any other excuse for people not to get along. It can be deeply discouraging, yet there are moments which lift us with the prospect of a different vision for the world, even those from the past.
A year ago historian Federica Gigante was preparing a lecture and searching the internet for a portrait of the 17th-century Italian nobleman and noticed something else in a photo from the Verona, Italy, museum. It was a metal disc which she knew was an astrolabe, an instrument used to map the stars and tell the time.
Several months later she visited the museum in person and was able to examine the astrolabe. She discovered that there was writing in Hebrew, and Arabic, and Latin, representing three religions and different cultures over the course of a thousand years of use in Spain. In an interview from The Guardian Gigante offers:
“[The discovery] never happened before and it probably won’t happen again,” she said. “We know that in 11th-century Spain, Jews and Muslims and Christians were working alongside each other, especially in the scientific media, and that many Jewish scientists were sponsored and patronised by Muslim rulers with no concern for their religion.
“It’s not that this instrument tells us this for the first time. All this is known, but what I find extraordinary is that this is a very tangible, physical proof of that history.”
It's a wonderful thought that rather than being at odds, or even at war, there was a common purpose for the advancement of science which helped explain the world and how it works.
Federica Gigante examines the astrolabe in Verona. Photograph: Federica Candelato
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