Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam

The museum occupies the Has Ahırlar building, the old imperial stables, in Istanbul's Gülhane Park next to the palace wall. It opened in 2008 on a concept by the historian of Islamic science Prof. Fuat Sezgin. Its 3,500 square metres of galleries hold 585 replicas of instruments, devices and models, and it is the first of its kind in Türkiye and, after Frankfurt, the second in the world.

Its argument is simple and persuasive: that developments in the history of science were continuous and that Islamic scholars between the 9th and 16th centuries formed a link between Eastern and Western science. The displays are organised in about twelve sections, including astronomy, clocks, seafaring, war technology, medicine, mining, physics, mathematics and geometry, architecture and city planning, optics, chemistry and geography.

Look for the copy of the world map of al-Idrisi, Taqi al-Din's mechanical clock of 1559, al-Jazari's elephant clock and al-Sijzi's planetarium. In the garden are a globe carrying a copy of the map made for Caliph al-Ma'mun in the 9th century and a botanical garden, opened in 2013, planted with 26 of the medicinal plants described by Ibn Sina in his Canon of Medicine.