The Astrolabe is an ancient device based on principles of stereographic known in Ancient Greece, which, whilst not strictly a calculator, can be considered a circular look-up slide-rule type device for tracking the movements of celestial bodies. It has moveable parts which enable the trajectories of the known star constellations at a particular lattitude to be aligned with a particular constellation sighted at a particular elevation. From this the time can be read off. Beyond this there some 100 possible operations that can be performed with an astrolabe.

There are some 2000 astrolabes in museums around the world. This “astrolabe” however is certainly a fake. James E. Morrison, a world expert on these devices notes that it is definitely not a working astrolabe but rather a poorly executed fake which, as I feared, misses some key features which would enable it to actually work. He notes that in his experience only two of the various items people have asked him about have actually turned out to be genuine working astrolabes. He notes:

I have no idea when or where yours was made. It probably came from a family of engravers who may have seen or had an astrolabe described to them, which they attempted to copy with no background on what an astrolabe is, how it works or how to design one. The ones I usually see were made in Pakistan, India or the area around Syria. It’s had to tell the origin of most of them. I can’t speak for Malaysia, but the Middle Eastern fakes were mostly made for the European tourist trade. Some were probably made for or by astrologers who wanted to have a complicated looking instrument to impress their clients. BTW, there are about 2,000 old astrolabes in various collections. I have not heard of a quality astrolabe of any origin being found in some time, although some interesting quadrants have turned up.

Assembled Astrolabe: Is the indicator a rule (to go on the front face) or (more likely) an adilade (to go on the back face)?

Jawi numerals above run from 1 to 12 (hours?) anti-clockwise on the left hand side of the rete.1

Astrolabe Mater Back Face

Astrolabe Mater Back Face

Astrolabe Mater Front Face

Note that this face is divided into 8 semi-quadrants. The first two characters in each semi-quadrant (reading from right to left, as does Jawi script) are ا لا Reading from right to left (as does Jawi script) these are the characters alif lam-alif which is Allah spelled phonetically.


Plate 1

Plate 2

Plate 3

Mater, Rete, Alidade (Rule?) and Plates.
 

1 From http://www.omniglot.com/writing/malay.htm (↑)

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