Ptolemy was studied in the western as well as in the eastern centers of Islam. Toledo, notwithstanding its conquest by the kings of Castile in 1085, long remained a scientific center, where the Arabic spirit of investigation lingered on among Jew, Christian, and Moor. It was largely through Spanish channels that the Latin West found its Oriental inspiration in astronomy and astrology.[331] About 1080 Az-Zarqalī, of Toledo,[332] who had devised a new type of astrolabe, wrote various works on astronomical subjects, including a commentary on a series of astronomical tables that had been constructed by a group of Jewish and Moslem scholars before his time.[333] These so-called _Toledo Tables_, with Az-Zarqalī’s _Canons_ explaining them, contained some incidental geographical information derived in part from Ptolemy’s _Geography_ and from Al-Khwārizmī.[334] They were rendered into Latin in the twelfth century by the famous Gerard of Cremona, who probably found in Spain most of the manuscripts from which he made his many Latin translations.[335] GEOGRAPHY IN SICILY Ptolemy’s _Geography_ was also studied in Sicily under the Moslem emirs and their successors, the Norman kings. From the eleventh century date several Arabic descriptions of Sicily now known only in fragments but bearing eloquent witness to a true enthusiasm for geography prevalent among the Moslem aristocracy of the island.[336] The Normans, who became masters of Sicily between 1060 and 1071, preserved much that was best of Arabic traditions and culture, and Moslem scholars played a brilliant part in the intellectual life of the court. Roger II himself was a devotee of geography, occupying much of his spare time in collecting Arabic geographical treatises and in questioning travelers about distant parts of the earth. “He gave himself up to this work tirelessly for fifteen years, never ceasing to examine personally into all geographical questions, to search for their solution and to verify facts, in order that he might obtain in complete form all the information that he desired” (from Jaubert’s translation of Edrisi).[337] EDRISI