Stargazers. Islamic religious beliefs and practices provide a particularly strong incentive for Muslims to study astronomy. All three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—developed among tribal peoples who traversed the forbidding deserts. It is easy to get lost in desert terrain, and once lost, chances for survival are slim. For this reason pastoral peoples developed a thorough understanding of the stars as their most crucial navigational tool. One group in particular, the Sabaean stargazers, combined Greek tradition with ancient Babylonian learning in mathematics and astronomy. Later, Muslim scientists greatly respected the Sabaeans for their advanced knowledge of the heavenly bodies and studied their works closely. Muslim astronomers also had access to the knowledge of the Persian and Indian scholars who had studied at Jundi- Shapur in Persia. When the Abbasids moved the center of Muslim rule to Baghdad in the...