Speaking of poetry, Ibn Mājid regaled us last week with a demanding passage in verse, though certainly not technical this time. It was a poem introduced as a “a riddle” (lughz), and purportedly about how nobility is related to elevation—we are still on a mainly astronomical section of the book, you see. It had some of the signature boasting of the author: “My name is like the radiant sun to which you entrust the direction of your way,” and yet it also played on quite a different level.
At the end of the cryptic verses, Ibn Mājid gives a hint and also issues a stern caveat: “This riddle is about that name which can only be understood by him who reads it with morphological knowledge, for it contains a fine point of language on the name Ahmad.” The hint about this name is welcome, because it is certainly not apparent in the text! and it has a double meaning: Ahmad is Ibn Mājid’s first name, but it is also recognised immediately by Muslims as an inner name of the Prophet, based on the same three letters h-m-d, from which derives Muhammad.
The caveat given is precious: it points to the fundamental need for thorough training in one canonical language. A pilot and a sailor of the 15th century could boast of his grammatical subtlety because mastery of a classical language was a given in a normal education.
Perhaps in our days we have reached a nadir of linguistic proficiency in academia, when the question of the need to learn languages other than one’s own is even asked.
At all times and everywhere (like still in most of the world today), the rule was to move at ease between languages, because the living contact with ancient sources guaranteed a direct and profound experience of “grammar.” Even today, unlettered peasants in India can recite Vedic verses in Sanskrit, like Arab nomads the Qur’an or any Chinese villager Confucius’ Analects—so the anomaly is ours, and the relevant questions are Eliot’s questions: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” [JA]
27 October 2020
19 October 2020
Be Practical: Learn Your Poems!
Once again, starting from a minimal astronomical excuse, Ibn Mājid takes us on a major literary digression about Arabic proverbs, including the horrible story of the poor milkmaid—well above the content rating allowed to our younger blog readers… and in any case bringing us again to the serious question of audience: who were these “Commentaries” written for? what for?
It is obvious that if you are a pilot in need of directions and practical nautical references, you won’t have time to read the lengthy excursus fancied by Ibn Mājid. You need straightforward data, concrete information to arrive safely to your harbour. In that case, what you need is to read Ibn Mājid’s poems.
In an interesting reversal of our contemporary views, this early nautical literature, or at least Ibn Mājid as its preeminent representative, used verse as the preferred medium for strictly technical contents. If you wanted to use metaphors and all the panoply of belletristic effects, and to ramble on in stories and anecdotes, then write prose. If, on the contrary, you wanted to convey highly technical and indeed vitally precise information, then write poems!
Still in our days, some old pilots on the shores of the Red Sea and the Gulf do remember their nautical verses for this or that orientation detail. It is a striking survival of a medieval and ancient tradition of “artisanal poetry”, of which the famous pre-Christian example is Aratus’ astronomical Phaenomena. It is also a testimony to the discreet relation between “music” in a broad sense and scientific and technological endeavours. We can picture the old sea dogs, retired at home after a lifetime of sailing, and now enjoying the crazy stories told by Ibn Mājid. They had all their music of science and skill inside their minds, and now they could sit back and enjoy the Fawā’id. [JA]
It is obvious that if you are a pilot in need of directions and practical nautical references, you won’t have time to read the lengthy excursus fancied by Ibn Mājid. You need straightforward data, concrete information to arrive safely to your harbour. In that case, what you need is to read Ibn Mājid’s poems.
In an interesting reversal of our contemporary views, this early nautical literature, or at least Ibn Mājid as its preeminent representative, used verse as the preferred medium for strictly technical contents. If you wanted to use metaphors and all the panoply of belletristic effects, and to ramble on in stories and anecdotes, then write prose. If, on the contrary, you wanted to convey highly technical and indeed vitally precise information, then write poems!
Still in our days, some old pilots on the shores of the Red Sea and the Gulf do remember their nautical verses for this or that orientation detail. It is a striking survival of a medieval and ancient tradition of “artisanal poetry”, of which the famous pre-Christian example is Aratus’ astronomical Phaenomena. It is also a testimony to the discreet relation between “music” in a broad sense and scientific and technological endeavours. We can picture the old sea dogs, retired at home after a lifetime of sailing, and now enjoying the crazy stories told by Ibn Mājid. They had all their music of science and skill inside their minds, and now they could sit back and enjoy the Fawā’id. [JA]
12 October 2020
The Interplay of the Two Zodiacs
As we continue reading through al-‘Awwā’, Ibn Mājid tells us about the positions of the lunar mansions in the solar zodiac. “At the time of Alexander,” the first northern and southern mansions were al-Sharatān and al-Ghafr respectively—what this means is that, around the fourth century BC, al-Sharatān was the first mansion to be seen rising after the vernal equinox; and Al-Ghafr the first after the autumn equinox—“but they are different in our time, in respect to the zodiac.”
Unlike the mansions of the moon, which correspond to stars visible in the night sky, the solar zodiac was determined by the tropical year. The Babylonian system inherited by the Greeks divided the zodiac into twelve equal divisions of 30 degrees, starting near αβ Arietis, on which the equinoctial sun rose around the year 400 BC. Nowadays, the zodiac is divided in the same way: the sun is said to be in Aries after the vernal equinox, to be in Taurus after 30 degrees, in Gemini after 60, and so on. However, due to the Earth’s axis movement (the precession movement), the equinoctial points have been slowly shifting to the west in relation to the stars in the background. Even though Aries conventionally begins after the spring equinox, the constellation actually seen rising at that period is Pisces. At the time of Ibn Mājid, “when the sun or the moon descend in al-Sharatān (αβ Arietis), only six degrees of Aries remain there, and all of al-Butayn (εδρ Arietis) is within Taurus.” The lunar zodiac remained throughout a sidereal system, and this is one of the reasons why it had, and still may have, very practical usages for navigation. [IB]
Unlike the mansions of the moon, which correspond to stars visible in the night sky, the solar zodiac was determined by the tropical year. The Babylonian system inherited by the Greeks divided the zodiac into twelve equal divisions of 30 degrees, starting near αβ Arietis, on which the equinoctial sun rose around the year 400 BC. Nowadays, the zodiac is divided in the same way: the sun is said to be in Aries after the vernal equinox, to be in Taurus after 30 degrees, in Gemini after 60, and so on. However, due to the Earth’s axis movement (the precession movement), the equinoctial points have been slowly shifting to the west in relation to the stars in the background. Even though Aries conventionally begins after the spring equinox, the constellation actually seen rising at that period is Pisces. At the time of Ibn Mājid, “when the sun or the moon descend in al-Sharatān (αβ Arietis), only six degrees of Aries remain there, and all of al-Butayn (εδρ Arietis) is within Taurus.” The lunar zodiac remained throughout a sidereal system, and this is one of the reasons why it had, and still may have, very practical usages for navigation. [IB]
06 October 2020
How Many Do We Need?
We have once again come across a mention of al-Sufi’s Book on the Shapes of Stars (Kitāb suwar al-kawākib, 10th century), considered by many as the the most important update on Ptolemy’s enormously influential Almagest (originally entitled Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις; the Syntaxis Mathematica, 2nd century).
The fascinating history of this relation has been explored time and again from many angles. Briefly, as regards uranography—the “cataloguing of stars” contained in books 7 and 8 of the Almagest—al-Sufi was the pivotal figure who revised the Alexandrian material and prepared it for further developments, culminating with Tycho Brahe’s Rudolphine Tables (1627).
Now, coming to our nautical context: when Ibn Mājid mentions al-Sufi, he invariably adds “and his forty-eight constellations,” a number which seems to go back to Ptolemy. Studying the lunar mansions has made palpable how arbitrary the division of the ecliptic is: you have a rotating circle dotted with shiny specks, you introduce some boundaries and project your lines. You can have 28 mansions or 12 signs or 36 decans or even 144 dodecatemoria. The division in 36 is easy to understand if we think of the rationale of the Babylonian “Three Stars Each” catalogues: for each twelfth of the ecliptic you select one equatorial, one southern and one northern star or asterism, so you cover a wider area and thus give more parameters for orientation (we are not going to waste all those stars!).
In a very useful summary of Ibn Mājid’s uranography, Ibrahim Khoury speaks of 24 major stars used in Indian Ocean navigation. Why 24? and why 48? These figures might be a Greek alphabetic reminiscence: the Greek alphabet has 24 letters, and using this number meant you were speaking of “the alpha and omega” of the stars, the “heavenly ABC.” It meant it was enough, that no other element was needed. I suspect some earlier source for this, perhaps Hipparchus… but the abiding and concrete question is how many stars do we really need to find our way. Right now, dear reader, when it is dark, how many stars in the sky do you need to know in order to find your way home? [JA]
The fascinating history of this relation has been explored time and again from many angles. Briefly, as regards uranography—the “cataloguing of stars” contained in books 7 and 8 of the Almagest—al-Sufi was the pivotal figure who revised the Alexandrian material and prepared it for further developments, culminating with Tycho Brahe’s Rudolphine Tables (1627).
In a very useful summary of Ibn Mājid’s uranography, Ibrahim Khoury speaks of 24 major stars used in Indian Ocean navigation. Why 24? and why 48? These figures might be a Greek alphabetic reminiscence: the Greek alphabet has 24 letters, and using this number meant you were speaking of “the alpha and omega” of the stars, the “heavenly ABC.” It meant it was enough, that no other element was needed. I suspect some earlier source for this, perhaps Hipparchus… but the abiding and concrete question is how many stars do we really need to find our way. Right now, dear reader, when it is dark, how many stars in the sky do you need to know in order to find your way home? [JA]
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