The astrolabic quadrant for a single latitude was invented in Egypt in the 12th century as an alternative to the astrolabe, which contains plates for a series of latitudes. The trigonometric quadrant as it appears here is known from a 10th-century Arabic text from Baghdad. The combination of these markings on a single instrument became popular in Mamluk, Egypt ans Syria during the 14th century and was particularly popular in Ottoman Turkey from the 16th century to the 20th.