A three-year project on Astrolabes in Medieval Jewish Society, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (project code AH/1003800/1) began on May 23, 2011, with Charles Burnett as Principal Investigator, Silke Ackermann of the British Museum as Co-Investigator, and Josefina Rodriguez Arribas as Researcher.

This project is being run jointly by the Warburg Institute and the British Museum, and will survey on the one hand astrolabes and related instruments made or possessed by Jews in the Middle Ages, and on the other, Hebrew texts on the construction and use of the astrolabe, with the aim of producing a monograph on the place of the astrolabe in medieval Jewish society. A website is being set up at the British Museum which will give full details of the project and its progress.

 

Illustration above: back and front of the Hebrew astrolabe at the British Museum, 14th century, Spanish?