arabic in the sky - saudi aramco world, sep/oct 2010
TRANSCRIPT
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Arab
icin
theSk
y
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.
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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.