Muhammad Saleh Thattvi (1074 AH/1663–64 AD), Mughal metallurgist, astronomer, geometer and craftsman, was born and raised in

Thatta Thatta ( sd, ٺٽو; ) is a city in the Pakistani province of Sindh. Thatta was the medieval capital of Sindh, and served as the seat of power for three successive dynasties. Thatta's historic significance has yielded several monuments in and ...

Sindh Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...

province in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

, during the reign of the Mughal Emperor

Shah Jahan Shihab-ud-Din Muhammad Khurram (5 January 1592 – 22 January 1666), better known by his regnal name Shah Jahan I (; ), was the fifth emperor of the Mughal Empire, reigning from January 1628 until July 1658. Under his emperorship, the Mugha ...

and the governorship of the Mughal

Nawab Nawab ( Balochi: نواب; ar, نواب; bn, নবাব/নওয়াব; hi, नवाब; Punjabi : ਨਵਾਬ; Persian, Punjabi , Sindhi, Urdu: ), also spelled Nawaab, Navaab, Navab, Nowab, Nabob, Nawaabshah, Nawabshah or Noba ...

Mirza Ghazi Beg Mirza Ghazi Beg Tarkhan ( fa, میرزا غازى بیگ ترخان, r. 1599–1612 CE) of the Tarkhan dynasty in Sindh ruled from the capital city of Thatta. He was the most powerful Mughal governor who administered Sindh, during whose rule the ...

of Sindh. During those years young metallurgists were recruited, patronized and delivered to the Mughal court at

Agra Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra is ...

Celestial globe

In 1559, Muhammad Saleh Thattvi headed the task of creating a massive, seamless

celestial globe Celestial globes show the apparent positions of the stars in the sky. They omit the Sun, Moon, and planets because the positions of these bodies vary relative to those of the stars, but the ecliptic, along which the Sun moves, is indicated. The ...

using a secret ''

cire perdue Lost-wax casting (also called "investment casting", "precision casting", or ''cire perdue'' which has been adopted into English from the French, ) is the process by which a duplicate metal sculpture (often silver, gold, brass, or bronze) is ...

'' method in the

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

, the famous celestial globe of Muhammad Saleh Tahtawi is inscribed with

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

and

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

inscriptions. Twenty other such globes were produced in Lahore and Kashmir during the Mughal Empire. It is considered a major feat in metallurgy.

Legacy

According to historians the first person to create a seamless

in the

was Ali Kashmiri ibn Luqman in (998 AH/1589-90 AD) he created many masterpieces in

Kashmir Kashmir () is the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the Kashmir Valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal Range. Today, the term encompass ...

in the reign of the Mughal Emperor

Akbar Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar (25 October 1542 – 27 October 1605), popularly known as Akbar the Great ( fa, ), and also as Akbar I (), was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. Akbar succeeded his father, Hum ...

, and during his rule the craft found its way into the city of

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...

and its workshops were most prolific, because there Metallurgists made making precision seamlessly cast globes. But the most prolific and largest was made during the reign of

Mughal Emperor The Mughal emperors ( fa, , Pādishāhān) were the supreme heads of state of the Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent, mainly corresponding to the modern countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The Mughal rulers styled t ...

by Muhammad Salih Tahtawi in (1074 AH/1665 AD) and is of interest for being inscribed in both

and

. Seamlessly cast globes continued to be made in Lahore up to the mid-nineteenth century.

References

{{authority control Mughal Empire Indian metallurgists Sindhi people Astronomers of the medieval Islamic world Mathematicians of the medieval Islamic world History of Sindh