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 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.