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K: Pre-Islamic Arab Constellations
21: Arabic anwā' tradition
Section of early 13th-century (Syro-Egyptian) astrolabe by Abd al-Karim al-Misri with pictorial representations of the 28 lunar mansions and 12 signs of the zodiac. Astrolabes were important for predicting star positions.
Considerable, but fragmentary, data exists to enable reconstruction of some of the basic star calendars of the Arabian Peninsula. Before their contact with Greek-based astronomy through Arab-Islamic civilisation the pre-Islamic Arabs has their own folk astronomy. They knew the fixed stars and asterisms and used a number of fixed stars and asterisms, the so-called anwā', for a variety of purposes. After the introduction of Islam in the 7th-century CE a substantial amount of poetry, proverbs, legends, and folk science was written down in Arabic texts. Some attention was focused on the star lore of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic Bedouins and farmers of the Arabian Peninsula. Specifically, from the 9th-century onwards Arabic-Islamic lexicographers and philologists collected old Arabic folk astronomy in books called Kutub al-anwā' (Books of the anwā') (Note: Most modern scholars simply write anwa'). From these books more than 300 old Arabic names for stars and asterisms have been recovered.
Some present-day individuals still retain knowledge of traditional Arabic star lore. Yemeni farmers till use a calendar based on the conjunction of the new (crescent) moon and the Pleiades. (This particular calendar is also appears in the recorded pre-Islamic lore.) In the Gulf region the Canopus calendar, generally based on arbitrary 10-day units from the late summer heliacal rising of Canopus, has long been a traditional calendrical system for Bedouins and sailors.
Daniel Varisco ("Stars and Texts in Arabia." (Essays from Archaeoastronomy & Ethnoastronomy News, Number 16, June Solstice, 1995)) states: "Individual stars and asterisms were used for defining the directions of the winds, timing of rain [availability of water], planting crops, pastoral activities [extent of pasture], pearling, and fishing seasons, and the like. In addition, some savants cited the location of stars as indicators of the approximate location of Mecca ...."
The pre-Islamic groups of Bedouin Arabs (i.e., the nomadic desert dwelling tribes of the Arabian Peninsula) had their own (non-standardised) individual names for the various bright stars. Indeed a rich tradition of popular star lore and seasonal lore originated on the Arabian Peninsula long before the introduction of Islam. (Paul Kunitzsch believes that the main body (younger group) of pre-Islamic Arabic star/asterism names were probably formed in the period 500-700 CE.) Pastoral tribesmen and farmers noted the risings and settings of certain stars to mark the rain periods, important winds, and seasonal events in nature. Also, they commonly regarded single stars as representing animals or people. Generally, bright stars from 1st to 3rd magnitude have had proper names in the Arabic world. The year was defined by basic seasonal change over the course of 12 months. Telling time was seasonally adapted to local contexts. An early Islamic source for the anwa' traditions, the early Islamic scholar Ibn Qutayba, states that the Bedouin Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula divided up the year from what they knew locally about the time of weather changes (hot and cold weather) and pastoral changes (appearance and disappearance of plants and pasture).
The anwa' stars (i.e., stars which marked the beginning of periods of time called anwa') are a pre-Islamic system of season- and weather-prediction by using selected prominent stars or groupings of stars. (The most important type of literature on pre-Islamic weather and astronomy is that of the anwa' dealing with potential times of rain linked with the risings and settings of certain stars.) As well as defining the seasons they act as "agricultural markers" for timing the agricultural activities. The term anwa' has the sense of rain hence the anwa' stars were associated with the rain periods. They also used them for orientation in nightly desert travels. However, the anwa' stars of the Arabs were primarily used as markers of rain. As there were variations in rainfall patterns in different parts of the Arabian Peninsula there were variously 4 to 8 periods identified. Generally, they began the year with the autumn rain followed by a sequence of rain periods.
The pre-Islamic anwa' tradition consisted of: (1) a knowledge of the risings and settings of the stars, (2) their association in particular with the settings of asterisms and simultaneous heliacal risings of other asterisms, (3) and their identification as markers of the beginning of the anwa' periods of time. (The singular term naw' (plural term anwa') is generally defined as the dawn setting of a star or asterism in the west at the same time as an opposite star or asterism rises with the sun in the east.)
This particular tradition has ultimately influenced the naming of individual stars in Western constellations. Al-Sufi's book Kitab suwar al-kawakib, our best authority for post-Islamic Arabic star-names and constellations, also included the pre-Islamic folk tradition of Arabic star names. However, al-Sufi used anwa' texts from the Islamic period.
In the post-Islamic textual traditions two systems of the anwa' have survived. The most well-known system is that of the 28 anwa' equivalent to the lunar stations of Arab astronomy and astrology with the 28 anwa' representing stars or asterisms along the zodiacal belt (ecliptic) of the celestial sphere. The origin of the system of 27 or 28 "lunar mansions" (i.e., a lunar zodiac) was the topic of considerable debate among 19th-century Orientalists. Scholars were generally divide between those who argued for a first appearance in India and those who argued for a first appearance in China. (A system of lunar mansions was established in China, India, and Sassanian Iran prior to the establishment of Islam.) A number of early Arab texts stated that a system of "lunar mansions" had formed a major calendar of the pre-Islamic Arabian Bedouin. However, there is little doubt that the Arabs borrowed the concept of the "lunar mansions" and later Islamic scholars attached seasonal almanac lore onto this imported calendar system. Julius Wellhausen (Reste Arabischen Heidentums (1897)) correctly concluded that the concept of 28 "lunar mansions" was borrowed from the astronomy of the Hindus and merged with elements of Arab star lore after the introduction of Islam. The peoples of the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula only recognised the seasons and rain periods of importance to them and had no concern with arbitrarily dividing the years into periods. Exactly when the pre-Islamic Arabs received the system of 28 "lunar mansions" (manāzil al-qamar) from India, and how this was achieved, is unknown. When it was done each "lunar mansion" was identified with on of the anwa' stars or asterisms.
It is usually stated that eventually the folk tradition of Arabic star names was preserved as the "lunar mansions." This would appear to be erroneous. The system of "lunar mansions" are a type of almanac for seasonal activities. Daniel Varisco ("Islamic Folk Astronomy." In: Selin, Helaine. (Editor). (2000). Astronomy Across Cultures. (Pages 615-650).) states: "The claim that the formal model of twenty-eight lunar mansions originated as a set sequence of asterisms from a pre-Islamic star calendar cannot be sustained." The Arab-Islamic concept of "lunar mansions" appears to have been borrowed from India. (Knowledge of the Indian lunar zodiac may have existed in the Arabian Peninsula in the late 4th- or early 5th-century prior to the birth of Muhammad. (The system of "lunar mansions" is mentioned in some old Arabian poems that are pre-Koranic; and are also mentioned twice in the Koran (dated 7th-century CE.) In the post-Muhammad period, during the Arab expansion, Arab scholars began to assimilate the sciences in Iran and India.) The "lunar mansions" are the constellations/asterisms which the moon moves through in its cycle around the earth and so the "lunar mansions" are a method for dividing up the celestial sphere. However, there would have been numerous locally relevant anwa' star lists throughout the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula. Knowledge of only a few stars is needed to set up a seasonal calendar. Also, the 28 stars/asterisms comprising the "lunar mansions" are not evenly spaced along the moon's path. (Most of the "lunar mansions" consist of pairs of stars or small groups of closely spaced stars.)
After the spread of Greek-based astronomy in the Arab-Islamic civilisation (i.e., from the 7th-century CE onwards) Arab-Islamic astronomers became familiar with the "lunar mansion" system and gave exact identifications of the stars/asterisms of the "lunar mansions" from among the stars listed in Ptolemy's star-catalogue in the Almagest. The "lunar mansions" were not actually used by the Arab-Islamic astronomers in their astronomical work. They were mostly used in astrology. The astrological texts that contained them were later to be translated into Latin and introduced into medieval western Europe.
Folk astronomy also flourished within Islamic society. This consisted of: (1) a knowledge of the sun's movement through the 12 zodiacal signs, (2) associated meteorological and agricultural phenomena, (3) use of the phases of the moon for time-reckoning, and (4) using shadows by days and the "lunar mansions" by night for simple time-reckoning.
The pre-Islamic Arabs did not expect rain at the risings and settings of all stars excepting those called naw'. The traditional anwa' texts record a length from 1 to 7 days for each naw'. Within the later "lunar mansions" scheme the length of each naw' is 13 days. These schematic lengths can hardly refer to the time for rain as several of the stations occur when there could be no rain. The sequence of rain periods attributed to the pre-Islamic Arabs varies from 4 to 8 periods of rain. It is no longer possible to reconstruct the anwa' names for the pre-Islamic seasonal sequence of rains in the Arabian Peninsula with precision.
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