Technology

You know,

humankind has always experienced time,

as days and seasons and months.

They feel the days as the earth spins before the sun,

and the seasons as the earth, tilted on its axis, moves around the sun,

and they see the months on the face of the moon,

as it does its own dance

around the earth and before the sun,

everything spinning like a dervish in a celebration of God.

And the day divides into parts ,

dawn, sunrise, morning, mid-day, afternoon, sunset, and dark of night,

and these are marked by the rhythms of the Sala.

But the Messenger had no clocks to mark the time.

They used their eyes.

And they described the time of the afternoon Sala

by the length of the shadow of a stick in the ground.

An idea used in many places around the world,

dividing up the day into hours using a sundial,

and you can even see them in Scotland today.

And in Makkah mostly it was sunny.

But especially when muslims began to move to other lands,

they realised they needed more than sunlight to tell the time.

Because some places are a bit like Scotland,

where you are more likely to see clouds than see the sun,

and the days stretch and shrink throughout the year.

So they used candles to tell the time

by how far the candle had melted,

but you couldn't use the candle again,

you needed a new one.

So it was better to use water to tell the time.

Drip it into a bowl and see how long the bowl takes to fill.

That way the time can be told very accurately,

and you don't even need new water,

it was reusable.

And you could use the water for large public clocks,

as in Fez,

as well as to power mechanical marvels,

like Al-Jazari's fabulous elephant clock.

It was 2.5 metres high, in the shape of an elephant, with a howdah,

and it's passenger, and its driver,

and two dragons, and a man with two falcons,

and a clock face,

all topped with a twirling phoenix.

The water mechanics were in the elephant's belly,

and all the things on top moved around every half hour to show the time.

But not only did those distant muslims need to know the time,

but also the direction of the qibla in Makkah,

and for this they needed more than the sun,

they needed the stars.

And the stars are sent to guide us says the Qur'an,

and those muslims made amazing astronomical instruments,

the most famous of which is the astrolabe.

People knew how it worked long before the muslims,

but they took the idea and made it wonderfully precise

in an adjustable disc that could fit into your hand.

It is said that it was the most important astronomical calculating device before modern computers,

and the most important instrument for looking at the stars

before the invention of the telescope.

And all made in an attempt to do their best

to find the perfect time and direction for the Sala.