Maragha

Maragha or Maraqeh مراغه is a city of the North-West of the Iran located at 130 km in the south of Tabriz. It was the capital of summer of Hülegü, grandson of Gengis Khan, which founded in 1256 the dynasty of the Ilkhans of Perse.

Maraqeh is pleasantly located in a North-South directed narrow valley, where runs the Safi river, at the end of a cultivated plain giving on the Lac of Orumieh, which is located 30 km more at the west. The city is surrounded by a high wall ruined in many places, with 4 doors. The city has also two bridges of stone in good state, which one says that they were built by Hulagu Khan, which had made its capital of it. The place is surrounded by vines and very productive orchards, all irrigated by channels coming from the river.

The observatory

Hülegü made there build in 1259 a observatory where the Astronome Nasir AD-DIN At-Tusi worked, before with the service of the Assassins in their fortress of Alamut that Hülegü destroyed in 1258. Tusi will carry out extremely precise tables of the movement of the Planet S in its work Zij-i ilkhani . This book contains tables to calculate the positions of planets as well as the names of the star S. the planetary system that he had imagined was most advanced of its time and was used in an intensive way until Copernic develops its heliocentric model . Between Ptolémée and Copernic, he is regarded as the most eminent scientist on this subject.

It is possible that Oulough Beg, the prince-astronomer of Samarkand (1394 - 1449), grandson of Tamerlan, saw the ruins of this observatory in its childhood. Since 1428, it was to build a observatory similar to Samarkand.

Random links: