Abū Muḥammad 'Abd al-Jabbār al-Kharaqī, also Al-Kharaqī was a Persian astronomer and mathematician of the 12th century, born in Kharaq near Merv. He was in the service of Sultan Sanjar at the Persian Court. Al-Kharaqī challenged the astronomical theory of Ptolemy in the Almagest, and established an alternative theory of the spheres, imagining huge material spheres in which the planets moved inside tubes.