Mariam al-Ijliya

Mariam al-Ijliya, also known as Mariam al-Asturlabi, was a Muslim maker of astrolabes active in Aleppo, Syria, in the 10th century, trained in the craft by her father al-Ijli, himself a noted astrolabe maker. She worked at the court of the Hamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla, who governed Aleppo from 945 to 967, constructing precision brass astrolabes used for astronomical observation and calculation, navigation and determining the times of Islamic prayer. She is one of only a small number of women instrument makers documented by name from the medieval Islamic world, known through the biographical dictionary of the historian Ibn al-Nadim, and her work stands as rare direct evidence of women's participation in the technical scientific crafts of the Islamic Golden Age. No astrolabes definitively attributed to her are known to survive.