"Wilt thou lere of sterres aught? Elles I wolde thee have told," Quod he," the sterres names, lo, And which they ben." Dan Geoffrey Chaucer's Hous of Fame. INTRODUCTION. This list of star-names is published in the endeavor to fill an acknowledged vacancy in our popular astronomical literature. It is not intended. for the professional astronomer, who, as a rule, cares little about the old designations of the objects of his study,- alphabets, numerals, and circles being preferable, indeed needful, for his purposes of identification. Yet great scholars have thought this nomenclature not unworthy their attention, Grotius, Scaliger, Hyde, and our own Whitney, among others, devoting much of their rare talent to its elucidation; while Ideler, of a century ago, not without authority in astronomy as in other branches of learning, wrote as to inquiry into star-names: This is, in its very nature, coincidently a research into the constellations, and it is so much more worth while learning their history as throughout all ages the spirit of man has concerned itself with a subject that has ever had the highest interest to him, the starry heavens. Old Thomas Hood, of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1590 asserted that they were "for instruction's sake. . . things cannot be taught without names"; and it is certain that knowledge of these contributes much to an intelligent pleasure when we survey the evening sky. For almost all can repeat Thomas Carlyle's lament: Why did not somebody teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day? Naturally these titles are chiefly from the Arabs, whose Desert life and clear skies made them very familiar with the stars, as Al Birūni 1 wrote: He whose roof is heaven, who has no other cover, over whom the stars continually rise and set in one and the same course, makes the beginnings of his affairs and his knowledge of time depend upon them. So that the shaykh Ilderim well told Ben Hur at the Orchard of Palms: Thou canst not know how much we Arabs depend upon the stars. We borrow their names in gratitude, and give them in love. But many star-names supposed to have originated in Arabia are merely that country's translations of the Greek descriptive terms, adopted, during the rule of the Abbasids, from Claudius Ptolemy's Η Μεγάλη Σύνταξις Tñs 'Aστpovoμías, the Great System of Astronomy, of our second century. For it was early in this khalifate, in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid (Aaron the Just), that Ptolemy's Lúvrağıç 3 was translated as Al Kitāb al Mijisti, the Greatest Book. This, in its various editions, substituted among the educated classes a new nomenclature; while, as revised by Al Thabit ibn Kurrah in the latter part of the 9th century, it eventually became, through a Latin version by Cremonaeus (Gerard of Cremona) of the 12th century, the groundwork of the first complete printed Almagest. This, published at Venice in 1515, so manifestly showed its composite origin that Ideler and Smyth always referred to it as the Arabo-Latin Almagest. The Greek text of the Syntaxis seems to have been practically unknown in Europe until translated into Latin from a Vatican manuscript by Trapezuntius (the monk George of Trebizond), several editions 1 This was the celebrated Khorasmian Abū Raiḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad of A. D. 1000, whose designation in literature came from his birthplace, a birūn, or suburb, of Khwarizm. His Vestiges of Past Generations, a chronology of ancient nations, and his India, are of interest and authority even now. 2 This first organized government among the Arabs began in 749, and under "its enlightened and munificent protection Baghdad soon became what Alexandria had long ceased to be." 3 This was subsequently designated as 'H Mɛylorŋ to distinguish it from his smaller astrological work in four books, the Τετράβιβλος Σύνταξις. Our word Almagest is now supposed to be composed of the principal letters of the Greek title. of this issuing during the 16th century. From all these and kindred works have come the barbarous Graeco-Latin-Arabic words that, in a varied orthography, appear as star-names in modern lists. But there were other purely indigenous, and so very ancient, titles from the heathen days of the Ishmaelites anterior to Mediterranean influences, perhaps even from the prehistoric "Arab al Baida," the Arabs of the Desert, these titles generally pastoral in their character, as accords with such an origin. So that we find among them the nomads' words for shepherds and herdsmen with their maidens; horses, horsemen, and their trappings; cattle, camels, sheep, and goats; predatory and other animals; birds and reptiles. It should be remembered, however, that the archaic nomenclature of the Arabs archaic properly so called, for we know nothing of its beginnings in one respect is unique. They did not group together several stars to form a living figure, as did their Western neighbors, who subsequently became their teachers; single stars represented single creatures,a rule that seems rarely to have been deviated from,— although the case was different in their stellar counterparts of inanimate objects. Even here they used but few stars for their geographical, anatomical, and botanical terms; their tents, nests, household articles, and ornaments; mangers and stalls; boats, biers, crosses, and thrones; wells, ponds, and rivers; fruits, grains, and nuts; — all of which they imaged in the sky. They had, too, still another class of names peculiar to themselves, such as Al Saidak, Al Simāķ, Al Suhā, respectively the Trusted One, the Lofty One, the Neglected One; their Changers, Drivers, Followers, and Wardens; their Fortunate, or Unfortunate, Ones, and their Solitary Ones, etc. None of these early asterisms, however, were utilized by the scientific Arabians, but, with their titles, became merely interesting curiosities to them, as to us. These were known as "of the Arabs," while Ptolemy's figures were "of the astronomers,"- a distinction maintained in this book by the use of "Arab " or "Arabic" for the first, and "Arabian" for the last. The Persian astronomical writer, the dervish 'Abd al Raḥmān Abū al Husain, now better known as Al Sufi,1 the Mystic or Sage, made mention of this early distinction, in 1 Al Sufi also was known as Al Razi, from his birthplace, Al Rayy, east of Teheran. A French translation of his work was published in 1874 by the late H. C. F. C. Schjellerup of Saint Petersburg. |