ʿAlī al‐Qūshjī was a philosopher–theologian, mathematician, astronomer, and linguist who produced original studies in both observational and theoretical astronomy within 15th‐century Islamic and Ottoman astronomy. He contributed to the preparation of Ulugh Beg's Zīj at the Samarqand Observatory, insisted on the possibility of the Earth's motion, and asserted the need for the purification of all the scientific disciplines from the principles of Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. Qūshjī was the son of Ulugh Beg's falconer, whence his Turkish name Qushči‐zāde. He took courses in the linguistic sciences, mathematics, and astronomy as well as other sciences taught by scholars in the circle of Ulugh Beg. These included Jamshīd al‐Kāshī, Qāḍīzāde al‐Rūmī, and Ulugh Beg himself. It has been claimed that he was also taught by al‐Sayyid al‐Sharīf al‐Jurjānī; if so, Qūshjī would have been quite young.
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