muwaqqit

In the history of Islam, a muwaqqit (Arabic: مُوَقَّت, more rarely ميقاتي mīqātī; Turkish: muvakit) 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 source...