Drei in der Kaiserlichen Öffentlichen Bibliothek zu St. Petersburg befindliche astronomische Instrumente mit arabischen Inschriften

Published in 1865 by Eggers in St. Petersburg, this scholarly work was authored by Boris Andreevich Dorn, a prominent German-Russian orientalist and academician. The text serves as a specialized catalog and analytical description of three specific astronomical instruments held at the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg, all of which feature significant Arabic inscriptions. Dorn, who served as the director of the Asiatic Museum, produced this study to bridge the gap between Islamic scientific history and the holdings of the Russian imperial collections, reflecting the nineteenth-century European academic interest in preserving and interpreting Eastern scientific artifacts.

Dorn’s writing focuses on the technical and linguistic challenges of translating and contextualizing the astrolabes and related instruments mentioned in the title. By documenting these pieces, he aimed to categorize the development of medieval Arabic observational tools for an international scholarly audience. The work is representative of the meticulous, philological approach favored by the Russian Academy of Sciences during the mid-nineteenth century, prioritizing the preservation of cultural heritage and the advancement of astronomical history through the study of material culture.