In the history of Islam, a muwaqqit (, more rarely mīqātī; ) was an astronomer tasked with the timekeeping and the regulation of prayer times in an Islamic institution like a mosque or a madrasa. Unlike the muezzin (reciter of the call to prayer) who was usually selected for his piety and voice, a muwaqqit was selected for his knowledge and skill in astronomy.
Not all mosques had a muwaqqit. The office was first recorded in the late 13th century in the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo and then spread to various parts of the Muslim world. Even then, many major mosques only relied on muezzins to determine prayer times using traditional methods, such as observing shadow lengths and twilight phenomena. The lack of historical sources and research makes it difficult to ascertain the specific functions and roles of the muwaqqit. There is uncertainty among historians of science whether the muwaqqit was a specialised office whose holder dealt exclusively with astronomical matters, or if it was part of a broader role of a teacher (mudarris) who also worked and taught in other fields.
During its peak in the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, prominent scientists held the post of muwaqqit. For example, ibn al-Shatir (1304–1375) and Shams al-Din al-Khalili (1320–1380) formed a team of muwaqqits in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus. Syria and Egypt were the major centres of muwaqqit activity in these centuries, while the office spread to Palestine, Hejaz, Tunis, and Yemen. The office continued to be recorded up to the nineteenth century, although muwaqqits produced fewer treatises and instruments than in earlier times. Today, mosques use prayer time-tables produced by religious or scientific agencies or clocks programmed for this purpose. These allow for the exact determination of prayer times without the specialised skills of a muwaqqit.
Background
Muslims observe salah, the daily ritual prayer, at prescribed times based on the hadith or the tradition of Muhammad (–632). Each day, there are five obligatory prayers with specific ranges of permitted times determined by daily astronomical phenomena. For example, the time for the maghrib prayer starts after sunset and ends when the red twilight has disappeared.
Because the start and end times for prayers are related to the solar diurnal motion, they vary throughout the year and depend on the local latitude and longitude when expressed in local time. The term mīqāt in the sense of "time of a prayer" is attested to in the Quran and hadith, although the Quran does not explicitly define those times. The term ʻilm al-mīqāt refers to the study of determining prayer times based on the position of the Sun and the stars in the sky and has been recorded since the early days of Islam.
Before the muwaqqits appeared, the muezzin had been the office most associated with the regulation of the prayer times. The post can be traced back to Muhammad's lifetime and its role and history are well documented. The main duty of a muazzin is to recite the adhan to announce the beginning of a prayer time. Before the use of a loudspeaker, this was usually done from the top of a minaret. The minaret provided the muezzin with a vantage point to observe phenomena such as sunset which marks the start time of maghrib.
Duties
The main duty of the muwaqqit was timekeeping and the regulation of daily prayer times in mosques, madrasas, or other institutions using astronomy and other exact sciences. At its zenith in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, major mosques often employed prominent astronomers as muwaqqits. In addition to regulating prayer times, they wrote treatises on astronomy, especially on timekeeping and the use of related instruments such as quadrants and sundials. They were also responsible for other religious matters related to their astronomical expertise, such as the keeping of the Islamic calendar and the determination of the qibla (the direction to Mecca used for prayers).
David A. King, a historian of astronomy, presents the muwaqqit as a specialised profession, a mosque astronomer "in the service of Islam" who produced a large body of treatises and instruments, even though their work did not necessarily influence the practices of the muezzins and the fuqahā who largely used traditional methods. The knowledge of a muwaqqit was passed to his students who specifically intended to be the next generation of the profession. King's description is based on his research into the primary works of the muwaqqits and contemporary Islamic legal texts.