Arabic in the Sky - Saudi Aramco World, Sep/Oct 2010

8/8/2019 Arabic in the Sky - Saudi Aramco World, Sep/Oct 2010

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Arab

icin

theSk

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September/October 201saudiaramcoworld.co


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Written by Robert Lebling

24 Saudi Aramco World

Arabic in the Sky

T h e M i l k y W

TheMagellanic

Clouds

CRUX

CETUS

AQUARIUS

CAPRICORNUS

GRUS

SAGITTARIUS

OPHIUCHUS

SCORPIUS

LIBRA

VIRGO

CORVUS

CRATER

HYDRA

CARINA

CENTAURUS

CANIS

MAJOR

PISCIS

AUSTRINUS

ERIDANUS

Alhab(Siriu

Canopus

Adhara

Sa

RigelAchernar

Antares

Spica

Fomalhaut

Diphda

Alnair

Shaula

Rigil Kent

Hadar

Alphard

Mira

SOUTHERN HEM ISPHERE


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Scholars have identified 210 visible stars that carry Arabic names, some of whichpreserve older names that date back to Babylon and Sumeria. In this illustration, the 30 brightest

stars with Arabic names appear as eight-pointed stars, in sizes adjusted for their relative

magnitudes, or brightnesses.

Star with Arabic NameStar with non-Arabic name

Note: To help readers find the Arabic-named stars,they are scaled larger as a group.

CONSTELLATION

ORION

ANDROMEDA

CASSIOPEIA

PEGASUS

TAURUS

ARIES

PISCESCETUS

PERSEUS

CYGNUS

DELPHINUS

LYRACEPHEUS

AQUILA

URSAMINOR

URSAMAJOR

HERCULES

DRACO

OPHIUCHUS

BOTES

CORONABOREALIS

LEO

VIRGO

HYDRA

CANCER

GEMINI

mka

Arcturus

Capella

Mirach

Hamal

Elnath

Mirfak

Procyon

Betelgeuse

Altair

Pollux

Deneb

Vega

Regulus

Castor

Alhena

Polaris

Alioth

Algieba

Alkaid

Dubhe

Kochab

Alpheratz

Denebola

Enif

Aldebaran

Pleiades

NORTHERN HEM ISPHERE

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originals, 39 percent from translatedPtolemaic originals, and 9 percent fromconjecture, erroneous readings or

artistic choice.

The First Wave

The first wave of transmission of Arabicstar names to Europe took place in theMiddle Ages, from the 10th to the 13thcenturies, and included about 48 namesof the 210. This was the only period ofdirect borrowings, where star nameswere translated directly from Arabicstar catalogs into corresponding Euro-pean astronomical works. Most of the

transmission occurred in Spain,where Christian astronomers weeager to learn from Muslim ones

Kept alive for centuries bymariners, explorers and otherstargazers, the Arabic starnames are a living testimony tothe golden age of ArabIslamicastronomy. From the ninth to th15th century, scientists work-ing in the Arabic language, in aregion stretching from Islamic

Spain across North Africa and thMiddle East to India, dominatedworldwide scientific endeavorand provided the raw material foEuropes intellectual renaissanceAstronomy was one of the greatest of these pursuits.

Before Copernicus in theearly 16th century, European anMuslim astronomers alike fol-lowed the cosmological model seforth by Ptolemy of Alexandria.According to Ptolemy, the Earthat the center of the universe,

was surrounded by a series ofconcentric translucent shells towhich were attached the moon,sun, planets and fixed stars. TheArab astronomers translatedPtolemys Greek star names intoArabic, and added some of theirown that had been passed downby nomadic ancestors who usedthe stars and star-pictures toguide their passage through thegreat deserts of the Middle East

The odd name of

Betelgeuse, in the

constellation Orion,

comes from an Arabic

original whose firstletter was inadver-

tantly changed by a

13th-century astrono-

mer. Second brightest

in Orion, the star that

was originally named

in Arabic yad al-jawza

appears far right at the

upper left, and below,

in an antique-style

rendition, at the end

of the sleeve of the

hunters tunic.


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for one of al-Sufis books, amajor work on the astrolabe.

Al-Sufi was a conscientiousobserver of the fixed stars. In hisday, the definitive guidebookfor study of the stars was manycenturies old: the Almagest,compiled by Ptolemy in about150 CE. The Almagestwas Ptole-mys greatest mathematical and

astronomical work, and it had amajor influence on Islamic andEuropean science for more thana millennium. In 903, al-Sufipublished the first-ever criticalrevision of Ptolemys star cata-logue. He corrected erroneousobservations and added othersnot recorded by the Greekmaster astronomer. Al-Sufistreatise on star cartography, oruranography,was called The

Book of Con-stellations ofthe Fixed Stars(Kitab Suwaral-Kawakibal-Thabita)andbecame a clas-sic of Islamicastronomy.

The bookcovers all 48constella-tions in thePtolemaicsystem. Thestars of eachconstellationare describedin detailposi-

tions, colors and bright-ness, or magnitudewithcriticisms of some ofPtolemys measurementsthat al-Sufi found to be in error. Al-Sufiswork was groundbreaking science for sev-eral reasons. It provided real star observa-tions, at a time when most astronomers

relied on the ancient measurements ofPtolemys star catalogue.

It was also the first scientific effort toidentify the old Arabic star names withastronomically located stars. Before al-Sufi, the wealth of star names had beenhanded down in literary or philologicalworks, with little regard for identify-ing which stars they actually applied to.Al-Sufi was not 100 percent successful inhis identifications, for some of the nameswere associated with more than one star

in a single constellation or with severalstars in different celestial images. But hepinned down most of them, so that hiscatalogue became the primary source forArabic star names for centuries to come.Most of the names that we use today cameto us from al-Sufis list, either via theEuropeanMediterranean civilization ofthe Greeks or through the ArabIslamiccivilization. (The process was compli-

cated by the fact that the Arabs translatedPtolemys work, including its Greek starnames, into Arabic and passed it along tothe Europeans, who had lost the originalGreek version until the 15th century.)

The very earliest Latin sources forArabic star names were two 12th-centuryinstruction manuals for astrolabes:De mensura astrolabii by Hermann ofReichenau and De utilitatibus astrolabii,attributed from earliest times to Gerbert

dAurillac butnow considered

to be of uncer-tain authorship(with one sectionattributed toHermann). Bothworks, prob-ably composed inSpain, contain ahandful of Arabicstar nameswhose formhas remainedunchanged downto the presentday, includingAldebaran, AlgolAlhabor (analternate namefor Sirius), Rigeland Vega.

Al-Sufis workfirst becameknown in the

West through Spain, where Christian andMuslim kingdoms coexisted and, whenthey were not jostling for influence or ter-ritory, cooperated. Christian king AlfonsoX of Castile (known as Alfonso the Wise),a serious student of astronomy, ordereda free translation or adaptation of al-Sufiinto Old Spanish, called the Libros de lasEstrellas de la Ochaua Espera (12521256),and added it to his omnibus astronomytextbook known as the Libros del Saberde Astronoma (Books of AstronomicalKnowledge). This opus also included theAlfonsine Tables, which furnished newdata for calculating the positions of theSun, Moon and planets in relation to the

Billions and Billions

Our universe, scientists say, con-

tains about 100 million galaxies, or

nests of stars, of which our own,

the Milky Way, is one. In fact, the word

galaxycomes from the Greek galaxias,

meaning milky. The Milky Way is made up

of some 50 billion stars.

The apparent brightness of a star isindicated by its magnitude. The brightest

20 stars are called first magnitude. First-

magnitude stars are about 2.5 times brighter

than second-magnitude stars; second-

magnitude stars are about 2.5 times brighter

than third-magnitude; and so on down to

stars barely visible to the unaided eye,

which are called sixth magnitude. This

is an ancient system, used by the Greek

astronomers Hipparchus and Ptolemy, that

survives virtually unaltered to our day. The

Islamic astronomer al-Sufi was particularly

skilled at observing and recording stellarmagnitudes using the Greek techniques.

Of all the billions of stars in the night

sky, about 6000 stars from our galaxy and

othersdown to the sixth magnitudeare

bright enough to be seen with the naked

eye. Some 900 milliondown to the 21st

magnitudeyield enough light to be cap-

tured in photographs.

Of the visible 6000, only 1025 were

named by Ptolemy in his Mathematike

Syntaxis, better known as the Almagest.

And of these, some 210 of the brightest and

most visible stars have modern names of

Arabic origin.

From the ninth to the

15th century, scien-

tists working in the Ara-

bic language, in a region

stretching from Islamic

Spain across North

Africa and the Middle

East to India, dominated

worldwide scientific

endeavor, and astron-

omy was one of their

greatest pursuits.According to Kunitzsch and others, theArabs also preserved star names from theMesopotamian civilizations of the Sume-rians and Babylonians.

Most of the Arabic star names we usetoday can be traced back to the star cata-logue of the astronomer al-Sufi, known inmedieval Europe as Azophi. His full name

was Abu l-Hussain Abd al-Rahman ibnOmar al-Sufi, and he is recognized todayas one of the most important scientists ofhis age.

Born in Rayy, Persia, in the late ninthcentury, al-Sufi studied and wrote in Ara-bic. Under the patronage of the BuwayhidDynasty, he conducted astronomicalobservations in his homeland and inBaghdad, capital of the realm. His mentorwas Ibn al-Amid, the vizier of the Buway-hid ruler. Ibn al-Amid wrote the foreword


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fixed stars, and revised the numbers inthe Toledan Tables originally compiledby Andalusian astronomer al-Zarqali(called Arzachel in Europe) severalcenturies earlier.

In the East, meanwhile, al-Sufis

book was regarded as canonical and wasrelied upon through the centuries by thegreat astronomers of the Islamic world,including one with a substantial impacton the West, Ulugh Beg of Samarkand(13941449). The nomenclature of the

later Oriental star catalogues, celestialglobes and other instruments went backmostly to al-Sufi or Ulugh Beg.

Ulugh Beg means the Great PrinceHis real name was Muhammad TaragayRaised in the court of his grandfather,the Mongol conqueror Timur (Tamer-lane), Ulugh Beg spent much of his youttraveling throughout the Middle East,moving from one conquered city to the

next. After Tamerlanes death, his son

This celestial map or macrocosm is the opening miniature in the Turkish Zubdat al-Tawarikh,

or History of the World, showing the seven heavens above the Earth, the signs of the zodiac

and the 28 lunar mansions. The model for it is essentially Ptolemaic, that is, Earth-

centered, even though it was produced in 1583, four decades after Copernicus proposed thesolar-system model we know today.

September/October 2010


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Shah Rukh inherited most of his realm,known to us as the Timurid Empire, andShah Rukh appointed his own 16-year-oldson Ulugh Beg to rule over Samarkand,the old Timuridcapital, while he wenton to establish a newpolitical capital forthe empire in Herat,Afghanistan. UlughBeg ruled Samarkandand its surroundingprovince for 40 years.He served briefly asruler of the overall

Timurid Empire, suc-ceeding Shah Rukh,from 1447-1449.

Ulugh Beg becamenot only a patron ofmathematics andastronomy but also an exceptional astron-omer himself. He believed that the hardsciences were different from theologyand literature, that they transcended soci-etal and religious boundaries and wereheld in common by all peoples, regardless

of faith or language. The prince collabo-rated with numerous leading scientistsof his day and founded at Samarkandone of the largest and most important

observatories inthe Islamic world.Supporting theobservatory was acenter for astro-nomical studies;Ulugh Beg hand-picked its scientistsfrom among theempires best. At itspeak the observa-

tory employed60 to 70 workingastronomers. Withthese impressivescientific resources,Ulugh Beg set in

motion a project to compile the Zij-i Sul-tani star catalogue (published in 1437), list-ing names and freshly observed positionsfor 994 fixed stars, a work often describedas comparable to al-Sufis. In fact, thecatalogue included 27 stars from al-Sufis

own work that were too far south in theheavens to be observed from Samarkand.

The Second WaveThe second wave of Arabic-origin starnames arrived in late-Renaissance Europein the 16th and 17th centuries. Duringthis period some 22 additional Arabic star

names entered common use in Europe,both among scientists and in literature.Most of them were introduced by a Ger-man lawyer and amateur astronomernamed Johann Bayer.

Bayer was born in Rain, Bavaria in1572. He studied philosophy at IngolstadtUniversity and later earned a law degreeat Augsburg. He worked as a lawyer inAugsburg and served as a magistratethere. Bayer also happened to be a talentedand serious amateur astronomer, and in

In a 13th-century Turkish miniature,

Aristotle instructs students in the use of the

astrolabe, a tool for measuring astronomica

altitudes. First invented in Greece, it was

extensively refined by Arab astronomers.

Bayer studied popular

names of stars with

painstaking care, from

Spanish translations

of al-Sufi to Latin

translations of Arabicversions of Ptolemys

original Greek.


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1603, at the age of 31just six years beforeGalileo introduced the first telescope tothe field of astronomyBayer publishedan important astronomical work, the Ura-nometria, which has been described as thefirst modern star atlas, and which becamethe standard reference for all later atlases.Though later astronomers named newconstellations and introduced new projec-tion systems, as well as totally differentartistic styles for drawings of the constel-lations, the Bayer influence was alwayspresent: The Uranometria is always theimplied standard of comparison.

The Bayer atlas contains 51 star mapsor chartsone for each of the 48 tradi-tional constellations of Ptolemy, plus achart of the recently discovered southernskies and two planispheres, or flat repre-sentations of the celestial hemispheres(northern and southern). The Uranome-trias star maps were engraved on copper

plates by Alexander Mair and are large,over 37 centimeters (141/2") across. Eachhas an engraved grid, so the star posi-tions can be determined to a fraction of adegree. Bayer took these highly accuratecelestial positions from the new star cata-logue of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe,which had circulated in manuscript formin the 1590s but was not printed until1602, one year before the Uranometria.

An important feature of Bayers atlaswas his new system of star nomenclature.

He assigned Greek letters to thebrighter stars, usually in orderof magnitude. For example, thebright star in Taurus, the bulls eye,becameTauri or Alpha Tauri.The Greek letters were recordedon the charts themselves and alsoin accompanying tables. Todaysastronomers still use the binomialdesignation invented by Bayer.

For our purposes, however,the most relevant feature of theBayer atlas is his recording ofpopular names for importantstars, drawn from the works ofPtolemy and his successors, toassure that all known stars couldbe identified with those listed inthe Bayer atlas. Bayer relied inlarge part on the first printed edi-tion (published in Venice in 1515)of Gerard of Cremonas 1175 Latintranslation of the Arabic version

of Ptolemys Almagest, as well ason the Alfonsine Tables and otherparts of the astronomy textbookof Alfonso X, including an old-Spanish (Castilian) translation

of al-Sufis Book of Constellations of theFixed Stars. He also consulted importantcommentaries on these works by JosephScaliger and by the Dutch philosopherand theologian Hugo Grotius.

In 1665, English orientalist ThomasHyde published the first-ever translationof Ulugh Begs star tables for European

readers, with an extensive commentaryon the star names. This Latin work,published at Oxford, bore the appropri-ately scholarly title Tabulae longitu-dinis et latitudinis stellarum fixarumex observatione Ulugh Beighi. Aswe shall see, this translationand commentary was par-ticularly valuable during thethird wave.

Among the other schol-ars who contributed Arabicstar names to the Europeancorpus during the second

wave were three notewor-thy Germans:

Jakob von Christmann(15541613) was an orientalistwho developed an interestin astronomy and in 1590

published a Latin translation of the writings of al-Farghani (called Alfraganusin Europe), a prominent ninth-centuryAbbasid astronomer who worked at thefamed Baghdad center of learning, Baytal-Hikma.

Wilhelm Schickard (15921635),mathematician, astronomer and orien-talist, invented a mechanical calculat-ing machine that could add, subtract,

multiply and dividea device sadly lostin the chaos of the Thirty Years War andforgotten for three centuries.

Philippus Caesius (Philipp von Zese(16191689), poet and author, wrote a worin Latin in 1662 about the constellationsand the legends attached to them, in thelight of contemporary astronomy.

The Third Wave

The third wave of Arabic star namescame to Europe in the early 19th cen-tury. As in the second wave, western

astronomers took what became modernstar names not from the original Arabicsources, such as al-Sufi or Ulugh Beg, bufrom translations of these sourcesthatis, from European renderings of theArabic star nomenclature. Some 140, ortwo-thirds, of the Arabic-origin namesentered the European star charts duringthis period, 94 of them from a single starcatalogue published in 1803 by the Italiaastronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (17461826).

Arabian Bear

To see how frequently we encounter

Arabic names among the visible

stars, look up in the northern night

sky and locate one of the most easily rec-

ognizable constellations, Ursa Major (the

Great Bear)commonly known in North

America as the Big Dipper because its

seven main stars resemble a bent-handledwater-dipper. All of these stars, from handle

to bowl, have Arabic-origin names:

Alkaidfrom al-qaid, The Leader

Mizarfrom mizar, Loincloth; original-

ly called Mirak, from maraqq, Loins

Aliothprobably mistranscribed from

Aliore, derived from al-hawar, White

Poplar or White of the Eye

Megrezfrom maghraz, Root of

the Tail

Phecdafrom fakhdha, Leg

Merakfrom maraqq, Loins

Dubhefrom dubb, Bear

In the late 1700s, Giuseppe Piazzi of

Palermo cataloged 6784 star names,

producing what became the standard

reference work of the 19th century.


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Piazzi, a native of Lombardy,is perhaps best known todayfor his discovery of the firstasteroid, Ceres, in 1801. (Ceres,with a diameter of about 950kilometers [590 mi], is nowconsidered a dwarf planet.)Piazzi, a Catholic priest, taughthigher mathematics and thenastronomy at the University of

Palermo. Prince Caramanico,viceroy ofSicily, commis-sioned him tobuild an obser-vatory there.In preparation,Piazzi spentfrom 1787 to1789 in Franceand England,studyingpractical tech-

niques underworld-classastronomersand acquiringinstruments for the PalermoObservatory. The most famousof these acquisitions was aunique 150-centimeter (5') cir-cular-scale altazimuth telescopebuilt by the renowned instru-ment-maker Jesse Ramsden ofLondon. Piazzi used this tele-scope in compiling his famousstar catalogue, containing 6784stars (7464 entries in the revised1814 edition), recorded with anaccuracy never before possible.

For star names, Piazzis Pal-ermo cata-logue reliedheavily onHydes 1665translationof the UlughBeg star list.(Despite itsage, Hydes

work hadremark-able stayingpower,

being reprinted, with corrections, atOxford in 1767 by Gregory Sharpe and inLondon in 1843 by Francis Bailly, amongothers, up to the modern era.)

Piazzi fashioned his new names fromHydes transcriptions of the names usedby Ulugh Beg in the table text as well asnames and endings brought forward inthe commentary from all other sources,Kunitzsch said in his 1959 classic Ara-

bische Sternnamen in Europa (Arabic StarNames in Europe). Ingeneral he does notfollow Hydes orthog-raphy very exactly.Many simplificationsare introduced.Piazzi also occasion-ally relied on Germanastronomer JohannBodes star atlas Ura-nographie (1801) forsome of his star-name

forms, Kunitzschfound. Whatevertheir sources, Piazzisstar names enjoyed

wide circulation. His catalogue wasregarded as a standard reference work ofthe 19th century and was of great value toEuropean and North American astrono-mers well into the 20th century.

Several other western scholars playedsignificant roles during the third wave.Ludwig Ideler (17661846), a prominentPrussian chronologist and astronomer,made some noteworthy contributions tothe understanding of Arabic star names.In 1809, he published a major work on theorigin and meaning of star names thatincorporated his own translation of theastronomical section of Zakariya al-Qaz-winis popular 13th-century cosmographyAjaib al-Makhluqat (The Wonders ofCreation), supplemented with notes fromclassical and other sources.

Ideler was the first western scholar todivide Arabic star names into two groups:truly Arabic names and those which theArabs fashioned by translating Ptolemys

Greek descriptions of stars positions inthe constellations. Idelers book was usedas a basic reference source in the West forover 150 years. Sadly, as Kunitzsch andother modern experts note, Ideler did nothave access to al-Sufis book on the fixedstars, and his work is riddled with errorsdue to his use of unreliable and chieflysecondary Arabic sources.

Richard Hinckley Allen (18381908),an American churchman, teacher andnaturalist from Buffalo, New York, was

As in other fields of learning,

Muslim Spain played an important

role in the transmission of

astronomical knowledge to Europe.

This 1986 Spanish stamp honored

the astronomer and instrument-

maker known as al-Zarqali.

32 Saudi Aramco World

The Arabic star

names of today are

a conglomeration

of heterogeneous

words fashioned at

different times and

in different ways.

The Summer Triangle

Three stars with Arabic names domi-

nate the late-summer sky toward

the east in the northern hemisphere:

Vega, Deneb and Altair. Each is part of a

separate constellation, but due to their

brightness, they appear linked together as

the Summer Triangle.

Blue-white Vega in the constellation Lyra(the Lyre of Orpheus) takes its name not

from Spanish but from the Arabic word for

plunging (waqi) as applied to an eagle

swooping down. The ancient Egyptiansas

well as the people of ancient Indiaalso

viewed this constellation as an eagle. Vega

is Lyras only bright star. Relatively close to

Earth, some 25 light-years away, it is also

one of the very brightest stars in the sky.

Deneb (Arabic for Tail) is the tail of the

swan, Cygnus, and the brightest star in that

constellation. Deneb has had other Arabic-

origin names, most of them linked to theposterior of a fowl. Johann Bayer called the

star Arrioph, from al-ridf, The Hindmost.

Deneb is a blue-white supergiant, some

60,000 times more luminous than the Sun,

but because it is very distant, it appears

as the 19th-brightest star in the night sky.

Denebs exact distance from Earth is uncer-

tain, but the most likely estimates place it at

about 1500 light-years away.

Altair (The Flier) is the brightest star

in Aquila, the Eagle, and the 12th-brightest

in the sky. It is a dwarf star, just under

17 light-years from Earth, and one of the

closest stars visible to the naked eye. Its

name is short for al-nasr al-tair, the flying

eagle, a term applied by early Arabs to the

three main stars

of the constella-

tion. There were

instances when the

brightest star alone

(Alpha Aquilae) was

given the name of

the entire group,

for example, onastrolabes, and the

ancient Sumerians

and Babylonians

also called this

very luminous star

the eagle star. In

modern movie lore, Altair is the solar system

of The Forbidden Planet, a classic 1956

science-fiction film inspired by Shake-

speares The Tempest.


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another important figure in the thirdwave, known more for his passion thanfor his accuracy. He became interestedin the history of star names after com-ing across a reference to a star with astrange name: Hamal (The Ram inArabic), also known as Alpha Arietis, thefirst star in the constellation Ares. Hisinterest developed into a hobby and theninto a lifelong avocation. As was said at amemorial service after his death, Likea prophet of the night, when the light ofthe day had vanished, he would name starafter star, ... speaking of their relations toone another, and of the meaning of theirnames, as if he were more at home amongtheir glories than most men would bewith the persons and things of their dailyenvironment.

Allen compiled a comprehensivework on star-name lore, published in1899 as Star-Names and Their Meanings(later reprinted as Star-Names: Their Loreand Meaning), which drew much of itsmaterial from Ideler and thus repeatedmany of that scholars errors. But Allenalso helped popularize the names wehave encountered that passed fromPtolemy and al-Sufi to Ulugh Beg andBayer and Piazzi, as well as along otherroutes. Allens book was if anything more

Related articles from past issues

can be found on our Web site,

www.saudiaramcoworld.com. Click on

indexes, then on the cover of the issue

indicated below.

astrolabe: J/F 92, J/F 04, M/J 07

Arabic science: M/J 07

Ulugh Beg: M/A 91

Bayt al-Hikma: M/J 82, M/A 87

Robert W. Lebling is a writer an

communication specialist based

Dhahran and a longtime contribu-

tor to Saudi Aramco World. Hislatest book is Legends of the Fire

Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzib

(I.B.Tauris, 2010).

Working in the Galata Observatory founded

near Istanbul in the late 16th century by the

Turkish astronomer Takyuddin, astronomers

had access to the best reference works and

technology of the era.

influential than Idelers on the popularunderstanding of star names, particularlythose of Arabic origin, and is still oftenquoted today. Some of Allens variants onthese names have ended up in modernreference works, including the AmericanNautical Almanac and Websters Interna-tional Dictionary. At the same time, mostof Allens predecessorsthe European andArabic-speaking astronomers, cosmogra-phers, philologists and others that he citesextensively in his bookremain shroudedin obscurity and in many cases have beenvirtually forgotten.

These, then, were the waves of knowl-edge that brought the Arabic-origin starnames to the West:

The First Wave of medieval times,with the greatest number of Arabic starnames, including the Ptolemaic corpus(150 ce), moving from al-Sufi (964 ce) tothe astronomical compendium of SpainsKing Alfonso x.

The Second Wave of the late Renais-sance, with most of the star namesmoving from the first printed edition of

the works of Alfonso x (1483) and fromthe first printed edition of PtolemysAlmagest(Gerards 1175 Latin translationfrom Arabic, published in 1515) to BayersUranometria (1603).

The Third Wave of the 19th century,with most of the star names transmit-ted from al-Sufi to Ulugh Begs star listto Hydes translation (1665) to PiazzisPalermo star catalogue (1803).

In part because of this complicatedtransmission process, the Arabic star

names in use today are neither uniformnor consistent but rather, according toKunitzsch, a conglomeration of het-erogeneous words fashioned at differ-ent times and in different ways. Directborrowings happened only during theMiddle Ages. The word formations ofthe second and third waves are indirectborrowingscases in which astronomershave taken terms from translations thatappear in the European literature. Butregardless of the nature of the borrowinthe process continued for almost a mil-lennium, with new influxes of Arabic stnames entering the literature of the Wesfrom time to time through the centuriesThis process resembles, in a way, theperiodic pulsations of brightness of thestar Algol in Perseus, sometimes referreto as The Winking Demona star thatas you know by now, was named for us bthe Arabs.

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Arabic in the Sky - Saudi Aramco World, Sep/Oct 2010