Daniel A. Stolz. The Lighthouse and the Observatory

Daniel A. Stolz’s The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt is a history of astronomy in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Egypt. In the Islamic world, astronomy has a storied history. The significance of its calculations to matters of religious practice has lent the subject a particular importance, especially in the medieval and early modern periods. In The Lighthouse and the Observatory, Stolz traces the field’s trajectory in the modern period, arguing that the production and significance of astronomical knowledge can only be understood as contingent. In Egypt, that contingency stemmed from the roles played by scholars trained in different traditions, changing public expectations and practices, the construction of new Ottoman-Egyptian state institutions, and Egypt’s enmeshment in the circuits of empire. In his careful weaving of a wide array of sources and the interplay of nested and scalar historical forces, Stolz has produced a text that reflects—plainly speaking—what the history of science can be at its best. The Lighthouse and the Observatory should be required reading for historians of science of the long nineteenth century as well as for scholars of modern Egypt.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Astronomy · Empire · Islam · Observatory · Ottoman empire · Physics · Political science · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies