For a brief list of medieval Islamic meteor and meteorite falls, see KhanM.A., “Muslim contribution to meteoric astronomy”, Islamic culture, xx (1946), 353–61; “Further references to cosmic phenomena in the kitāb al-Muntaẓam of ibn al-Jawzī and a few in Tārīkh-e-Rāḥāt Afzā (India)”, Islamic culture, xxii (1948), 188–91. A few references to comets are contained in the latter paper.
2.
See for example: NewtonR. R., Medieval chronicles and the rotation of the Earth (Baltimore, 1972).
3.
SaidS. S.StephensonF. R.RadaW. S., “Records of solar eclipses in Arabic chronicles”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, lii (1989), 38–64.
4.
Freeman-GrenvilleG. S. P., The Muslim and Christian calendars (Oxford, 1977).
5.
Von OppolzerT. R., Canon der Finsternisse (Vienna, 1887), reprinted as Canon of eclipses (New York, 1962).
6.
StephensonF. R.MorrisonL. V., “Long-term variations in the rotation of the Earth: 700 b.c. to a.d. 1980”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, A, cccxiii (1984), 47–70.
7.
On the prayer-times in Islam, see for example the forthcoming article Mīḳāt (“Astronomical timekeeping”) by WensinckA. J. (legal aspects) and KingD. A. (astronomical aspects) to appear in the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden, 1960–); KennedyE. S., “Al-Bīrūnī on the Muslim times of prayer”, in The scholar and the saint: Studies in commemoration of Abū al-Raiḥān al-Bīrūnī and Jalāl al-Dīh al-Rūmī (New York, 1975), 83–94, reprinted in KennedyE. S., colleagues and former students, Studies in the Islamic exact sciences (Beirut, 1983), 299–310.
8.
On the origin of the definition of the daytime prayers duḥā, ẓuhr and 'aṣr, see KingD. A., “A fourteenth century Tunisian sundial for regulating the times of Muslim prayer”, in his Islamic astronomical instruments (London, 1987), article xviii, especially Appendix B.
9.
On the definition of the night-time prayers fajr and ‘ishā’, corresponding to the moment when the Sun is 18° below the eastern or western horizon, see al-Bīrūnīal-RaihānAbūAḥmadMuḥammad ibn (1030), al-Qānūn al-Mas'ūdī (3 vols, Hyderabad, Deccan, 1955), ii, 948–50, translated on p. 46 of WiedemannE., “Über Erscheinungen bei der Dammerung und bei Sonnenfinsternissen nach arabischen Quellen”, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, xv (1923), 43–52. (al-Bīrūnī notes that certain other astronomers prefer 17° rather than 18°.) Several other Muslim astronomers adopted unequal values for the solar depression angle. For example, Ibn Yūnus used 19° at the beginning of morning twilight and 17° at the end of evening twilight; see KingD.A., “Ibn Yunus' very useful tables for reckoning time by the Sun”, Archive for history of exact science, x (1973), 342–94, reprinted in idem, Islamic mathematical astronomy (London, 1986), article ix. (This work also refers to the equal values of 18° or 17° for both twilights as adopted by al-Bīrūnī and other astronomers).
10.
King, op. cit. (ref. 7, 1987), especially pp. 188 and 202.
11.
Accounts of such tables for regulating the times of prayer are to be found in King, Islamic mathematical astronomy, articles ix, x and xii.
