Astrolabios en la España medievalde Al-Andalus a los reinos cristianos

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to catalogue and contextualize the astrolabes made in al-Andalus and the Hispanic Christian Kingdoms during the Middle Ages as objects which portray a successful symbiosis between art and science. This task had not been tackled until now and it requires an approach to the astrolabe from its multiple aspects: scientific, cultural, symbolic, sumptuous and artistic. The available information on the medieval peninsular astrolabes is scarce, disperse, sometimes obsolete and, in any case, has been approached from the perspective of the history of science, something perfectly understandable due to the scientific characteristics of the astrolabes, but partly responsible for the lack of visibility of its other aspects. The layout of the catalogue is chronological and the andalusí production is separated from that of the Christian kingdoms for practical reasons. Notwithstanding that approach, the astrolabes from both sides of the border present in the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages engage in a dialogue and are reunited in the chapters dealing with the cultural context and the symbolic and iconographic features. The exhaustive exercise accomplished to catalogue the 49 extant astrolabes, 34 from al-Andalus and 15 attributed to the Hispanic Christian kingdoms, has permitted modelling the workshops where they may had been made. Until now, the complex process that shapes the manufacturing of an astrolabe in the medieval period, from its conception to his completion, has not been fully addressed. The challenge has been dealt with by means of an intense fieldwork, the approach to the material objects on their own, the analysis of published primary sources and the help of an extensive and varied bibliography. All this has generated a discourse that structures a model presented as a starting point for future debates and improvements. The contextualization starts by focussing on the patronage of court, the most important one, both in al-Andalus, in its different chronological periods, and in the Hispanic Christian kingdoms. In this second case, the extant documents confirm the presence and support of astrolabes in the courts of the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Navarre. The addition of Navarre to the other two kingdoms, traditionally presented as involved in astrolabes, is another contribution of this thesis...