Science Astronomy Arabic Star Names: A Treasure of Knowledge Shared by the World

The origin of star names
Regardless of origin, almost all star names belong to old traditions.
They are a part of the collective cultural heritage of humanity.
Modern astronomers study many stars too faint to see without a
telescope, and these are so numerous they are known only by
cataloguenumbers and coordinates. As a result, official star names are
essentially limited to the old names, and typically only bright stars
have names.
The majority of stars names are related to their constellation, e.g.,
the star Deneb means"tail" and labels that part of Cygnus the Swan.
Others describe the star itself, such as Sirius , which translates
literally as "scorching," apt enough for the brightest star in the
sky. Quite a lot of prominent stars bear Arabic names, in which
alcorresponds to the article"the" and often appears in front, e.g.,
Algol , "The Ghoul." Its inclusion has become somewhat arbitrary over
time. Hence, several star namesof Arabic origin are givenelsewhere
with or without the al- prefix. Most other names of starsinherited
from the past have Greek, Latin or Chinese labels.
History of Arabic Star Names
Large image
Figure 2: The depiction of Orion, as seen from Earth (left) and a
mirror-image, from a 13th-century copy of al-Sufi's Book of the Fixed
Stars. In this version, Orion's shield has become a long sleeve,
typical of Islamic dress. Source: http://www.ianridpath.com/
startales/startales1b.htm .
Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer who lived and worked around 100-178 CE
in Alexandria, Egypt, collected ancient Greek descriptions of 1,022
stars in his famous book The Great System of Astronomy , popularised
under its shortened Arabic title, the Almagest. Ptolemy's catalogue of
stars arranged into 48 constellations, with estimates of their
brightness, based largely on the observations of the Greek earlier
astronomers, such as Hipparchus.
Ptolemy's book was translated twice into Arabic in the 9th century and
became famous. Many of the Arabic-language star descriptions in the
Almagest came to be usedwidely as names for stars.The leading expert
on star names in Islamic astronomy, the German historian Paul
Kunitzsch, has identified two traditions of star names in Muslim
heritage. The first is the traditional starfolklore of the Muslim
peoples which he has named "indigenous-Arabic", the second beingthe
scientific Islamic Arabic tradition, which he designates
"scientific-Arabic".
Large image
Figure 3: Depiction of star patterns for the Celestial Twins ofthe
constellation Gemini in al-Sufi's catalogue of stars. Source:
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/
issue/200703/rediscovering.
arabic.science.htm .
When the Arabic texts were translated into Latin beginning from the
12th century, the Arabic tradition of star names was passed down to
the Latin world. However, this happened often in a highly corrupted
form that either changed the meaning, or in extreme cases gave birth
to wordswith no meaning at all. Other names were mistakenly
transferred from one star to another,so that a name might even refer
to a different constellation (Greek or Arabic) rather than to theone
of the star's actual residence.
Nevertheless, even with these shortcomings, the majority of star names
adopted since the Renaissance are Arabic inorigin. In 1603, German
astronomer Johann Bayer(1572-1625) instituted a system of assigning
Greek letters to stars (Bayer designation), consisting of a lowercase
Greek letter followed by the genitive name of the constellation. The
letters are usually assigned to the stars in the order of their
brightness within a given constellation. For instance, the brightest
star in a constellation"Alpha" was rendered as"the second Beta," and
soon. To the Greek letter name is appended the Latin possessive form
of the constellation name. Thus the brightest star in Lyra, Vega (an
Arabic proper name), becomes Alpha of Lyra or Alpha Lyrae (where
"Lyrae" means "of Lyra").
Al-Sufi's Book of the FixedStars
Large image
Figure 4: Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Tarcama-i Kitab-i Suvaru'l-kevâkib ,
Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 2595, fol. 25b-26a. Figure of
Cassiopeia, dhât al-kursî(the seated one). The constellation, composed
of 13 stars, represents the figure of a woman seated on a cushioned
chair. The largest of the stars, in the cushion upon which one of
Cassiopeia's elbows rests, is called al-kaff al-khadib (written
al-hadîb), maning "the hand of the dyed one".
One of those who left an indelib`le influence on the Arabic
observation and study of stars is the astronomer Abu al-Husayn 'Abd
Al-Rahman al-Sufi (903-986), known also by his Latinized name of
Azophi, who systematically revised Ptolemy's catalogue of stars.
Al-Sufi produced a revised and updated version of Ptolemy's Almagest
in a major bookcalled Kitab suwar al-kawakib (The Book of Fixed
Stars), completed around 964 CE. Built on the basis of the Greek
astronomical heritage, the work of al- Sufi contained a listing of the
Arabs' own star names, magnitudes determined by al-Sufi himself, and
two drawings of each constellation, one as it is seen in the sky and
one reversed right to left as itwould appear on a celestial globe. The
oldestsurviving copy was produced by his son around 1010 CE and is
preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Marsh 144).
Large image
Figure 5: Depiction of star patterns for the Celestial Twins (Jawza)
of the constellation Gemini in Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's Tarcama-i
Kitab-i Suvaru'l-kevâkib , Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya 2595, fol.
51b.
According to Paul Kunitzsch, the German authority on Arabic star
names, local tradition of the peoples of Islamic lands in the Arabian
Peninsula and in the Middle East had their own names for various
bright stars such as Aldebaran, and they commonly regarded single
stars as representing animals or people. For example, the stars we
know as Alpha and Beta Ophiuchi were regarded by them as a shepherd
and his dog, while neighbouring starsmade up the outlines of afield
with sheep. Some ofthe Arabic names were already so many centuries old
that their meanings were lost even to al-Sufi and his contemporaries,
and theyremain unknown today. Other star names used by al-Sufi and his
compatriots were direct translations of Ptolemy's descriptions. For
example, the star name Fomalhaut comes from the Arabic meaning"mouth
of the southern fish", which is where Ptolemy had described it in the
Almagest.
Large image
Figure 6: Depiction of star patterns fort he Pegasus
(al-Farasal-a'zam) constellations from Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's
Tarcama-i Kitab-i Suvaru'l-kevâkib , Süleymaniye Library, MS Ayasofya
2595, fol. 37a.
Al-Sufi did his own brightness and magnitude estimates which
frequently deviated from those in Ptolemy's work. He identified the
Large Magellanic Cloud, which is visible from Yemen, though not from
Isfahan in the centre of Iran where he worked; it was not seen by
Europeans until Magellan's voyage in the 16th century. He also did the
earliest recorded observation of the Andromeda Galaxy, which he
described as a"small cloud". He observed that the eclipticplane is
inclined with respect to the celestial equator and more accurately
calculated the length of the tropical year. He observed and described
the stars, their positions, their magnitudes and their colour, setting
out his results constellation by constellation. His famous Book of
Fixed Stars was translated into Latin and had a major influence in
Europe since the 13th century, both by its textual descriptions and
pictures.

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