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In the early 17th century, during the Golden Age of the Mughal Empire, two engineering brothers in present-day Pakistan created a prodigious brass astrolabe for a powerful nobleman. More than 400 years later, their intricate computer was auctioned by Sotheby’s in London, and it fetched some $2.75 million.

Astrolabes, invented by Greek astronomers around 200 B.C.E., spread through the Islamic world by the eighth century. The device “reached its zenith in the hands of Islamic scientists,” according to a 2023 episode of NOVA by PBS. People used the circular instruments’ engraved, interchangeable plates to calculate heights, tell time and navigate by the stars.

“They are essentially a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional universe,” Federica Gigante, a historian at the Oxford Center for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, tells BBC News’ Nikhil Inamdar. “I compare them to modern-day smartphones because you can do so many things with them.”

Most astrolabes were pocket-sized. The Mughal example, though, is about 18 inches tall—bigger than a large pizza. It is “perhaps the largest [astrolabe] in existence,” Benedict Carter, head of Sotheby’s Islamic and Indian Art department, tells BBC News. Ahead of the artifact’s April 29 auction, it was exhibited at Sotheby’s London galleries—marking its first-ever public appearance.

According to Sotheby’s, the astrolabe was made in 1612 in Lahore. This was during the reign of the Mughal dynasty, a succession of Islamic, Turkic-Mongol rulers who ruled over territory that later became India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The empire entered a long age of peace and prosperity around the mid-1500s, with the ascension of Emperor Akbar. Lahore became a Mughal hub of academic and technological development—and home to some Mughal royals.

During this period, a succession of skilled craftsmen—four generations of fathers and sons—created unparalleled scientific instruments in Lahore. Brothers Qa’im Muhammad and Muhammad Muqim were stars of this family business, which was known as the Lahore School. In the early 1600s, local nobleman Aqa Afzal requested the brothers build him an astrolabe.

The resulting instrument was “almost four times the size of a typical astrolabe from 17th-century India,” Carter tells BBC News. Its engravings include the names and locations of 38 stars and 94 cities, including Mecca, Bijapur, Ajmer, Kashmir and Lahore. The measurement ticks are “so fine they are subdivided down to a third of a degree,” per Sotheby’s. The detail reflects the Lahore School’s excellent craftsmanship, then “at its most refined,” Carter tells BBC News.

One use for an Islamic astrolabe was finding the direction of Mecca—which Muslims point themselves toward to pray.

“Astrolabes were a fairly common tool for scientists besides being used in the community … probably in mosques by muezzins to calculate the time of prayer,” Gigante told NPR’s Ari Daniel in 2024, after she discovered multilingual markings on an Islamic astrolabe from medieval Spain.

The Mughal empire collapsed in the 19th century, and the Lahore astrolabe eventually entered the collection of H.H. Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II, the second-to-last king of Jaipur. After his death in 1970, the astrolabe went to his wife, then to a private collection in London.

The only other existent astrolabe made by Qa’im Muhammad and Muhammad Muqim is at the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. Like the Lahore piece, the astrolabe is inscribed with their names, but it’s much smaller—measuring less than five inches across.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-giant-400-year-old-astrolabe-made-for-royalty-by-mughal-master-craftsmen-and-owned-by-royalty-fetched-millions-at-auction-180988638/