During the century following this horological exuberance in Damascus, the center of gravity of Islamic astronomy shifted from the East to the Hispano-Moorish West. At the same time there comes more evidence that the line of mathematical protoclocks had not been left unattended. This is suggested by a description given by Trithemius of another royal gift from East to West which seems to have been different from the automata and hydraulic devices of the tradition from Procopius to Ri[d.]w[=a]n:[19]
In the same year [1232] the Saladin of Egypt sent by his ambassadors as a gift to the emperor Frederic a valuable machine of wonderful construction worth more than five thousand ducats. For it appeared to resemble internally a celestial globe in which figures of the sun, moon, and other planets formed with the greatest skill moved, being impelled by weights and wheels, so that performing their course in certain and fixed intervals they pointed out the hour night and day with infallible certainty; also the twelve signs of the zodiac with certain appropriate characters, moved with the firmament, contained within themselves the course of the planets.
[Illustration: Figure 10.--CALENDRICAL GEARING DESIGNED BY AL-BIRUNI, _ca._ A.D. 1000. The gear train count is 40-10+7-59+19-59+24-48. The gear of 48 therefore makes 19 (annual) rotations while that of 19-59 shows 118 double lunations of 29+30=59 days. The gear of 40 shows a (lunar) rotation in exactly 28 days, and the center pinions 7+10 rotate in exactly one week. After Wiedemann (see footnote 20).]
The phrase "resembled internally" is of especial interest in this passage; it may perhaps arise as a mistranslation of the technical term for stereographic projection of the sphere, and if so the device might have been an anaphoric clock or some other astrolabic device.
This is made more probable by the existence of a specifically Islamic concentration on the astrolabe, and on its planetary companion instrument, the equatorium, as devices for mechanizing computation by use of geometrical analogues. The ordinary planispheric astrolabe, of course, was known in Islam from its first days until almost the present time. From the time of al-Biruni (_ca._ 1000)--significantly, perhaps, he is well known for his travel account of India--there is remarkable innovation.