Necklace of Suns Excursion

Last week we followed Ibn Mājid’s example and went on an excursion away from our main topic. We did so, nonetheless, because he himself piqued our curiosity again and again through the Fawā’id with his references to what he simply calls the “Nayrūz”. This solar calendar of Persian origin was used by Muslim pilots as the chronological reference for sailing seasons, as a complement to the lunar Hijri calendar they used in everyday life. In the Fawā’id, Nayrūz means simply “the first day of the solar year,” just like the contemporary cognate term, Nowruz.

But there are several kinds of Nayrūz mentioned: the Hindi, the Jalālī, the Arab… So we thought that Sulaymān al-Mahrī, the other luminary of Arab nautical literature, would help us clarify things, and we set about reading his brief Qilādat al-shumūs, the “Necklace of Suns”, where he lists five different calendars known to 15th century pilots: “lunar, solar, Byzantine, Coptic, and Persian.”

The little treatise itself is quite dry, a series of arithmetical formulas used to calculate the “uss”, “basic element” of each calendar. From what we have gathered so far, this has to do with calculating the relation between lunar phases and the beginning of the solar year reckoning, which naturally concerns the relation with the lunar Hijri calendar. There is much to be said about this remarkable occurrence of the perennial dynamics between sun and moon: the predicament of our pilots simply frames anew the old fundamental calendrical riddle, “how to account jointly for lunar and solar cycles, since as humans we rely on both luminaries?” “How to ‘marry’ sun and moon in the calendar for the sake of our science and cognition?”

But to leave on a lighter note for the festive days ahead, consider this instead: early modern Arab pilots, like their medieval forebears, rode the waves and lived their lives in a truly multipolar world, where even time-reckoning was far from uniform, and where several eras coexisted. When reaching lands of different cultures, they were quite practically time travelling, sometimes moving centuries back and forth. While the practical advantages of having world standards are undeniable, what an impoverishment that other eras have today become mere curiosities or exclusively liturgical in purpose. How many eras do we know about today? Today’s solstice must surely be a great occasion for giving them a thought. We wish you all good cheer at this start of new cycles! [JA]

The African Colleagues

A passing commentary by Ibn Mājid last week draws my attention to some aspects of his relation to Africa: “According to the ancients, this mansion (he is referring to Sa‘d al-su‘ūd, mansion 24) is found within the sign of Capricorn, but the people of Zanj (roughly what we know as the Swahili coast) consider that, as of the date of this book, it belongs in Aquarius.”

The intensity and historical importance of the maritime traffic between the west coast of India, the Arabian Peninsula, and the east coast of Africa, has been the subject of much international research, and it has elicited from medieval legends to modern soap operas shared across cultural and national boundaries. This sort of Oceanic triangle, comprising the historical areas of the Arabian Sea and the Sea of Zanj, bears testimony archaeologically, linguistically, religiously, economically and in other domains to perennial cultural exchange. So this is not new, and recent scholarship keeps stretching the historical boundaries of this fascinating record.

A second takeaway from our initial citation is the reference to those Zanji astronomers whom he obviously considered as interlocutors, or who were at least into the details of the overlapping between solar and lunar zodiacs. This amounts to saying they had an interest in both theoretical and practical astronomy, including awareness of precessional shifts. It is an enticing testimony to the collegial relations across the waters, and to the state of astronomical study on the Swahili Coast during the 15th century.

Finally, note the ring of immediacy and adventure when he implies that his book is informed by contemporaneous scientific dialogue between Africa and Arabia, and naturally Persia, Gujarat, Malabar… It makes you wonder to what extent our many new exciting initiatives of Indian Ocean Studies are simply picking up the torch, restarting a tradition of generous exchange which became dormant only a few centuries ago. [JA]

Glimpses of Another Astronomy

One of the most powerful recurring impressions, as we read further the Arabic nautical classics of the late 15th and early 16th century, is that they are mirrors or prisms through which we can half discern a very different way of approaching astronomy. It is as if Ibn Mājid and Sulaymān al-Mahrī are themselves manāzil, waystations, and also milestones on the transmission path from a remote and now barely discernible past, and as if they allow us glimpses into an altogether non-Western view and science of the heavens.

Speaking of one of the altitude measures taken in combination with the 23rd mansion, Ibn Mājid explains: “This measuring is reliable and well-known within the lore of substitutions (tabādul) and graduation (tadrīj) of the sky… no other is better known in reliability and usefulness.” These “substitutions“ refer to one of the aspects of the complex observational techniques whereby most points along the ecliptic, and pretty much everywhere through the heavens, are used in combination with other places, regardless of their brightness, because it is a fine-tuned web of relations, calibrated through centuries in a transnational decentralised endeavour.

In fact, and quite remarkably, whereas it seems that European celestial navigation started developing in earnest thanks to national state-sponsored action, the equivalent acquisition of knowledge took place from the Pacific to the Arabian Sea in an organic way, over many boundaries and centuries. This contrast has to do in part with the specific requirements of Mediterranean navigation, but it is nonetheless impressive to find, from Polynesia to Madagascar, from Guangzhou to Aden, such similar traditions of astronavigation, including stellar rhumbs and the use of the 27 or 28 lunar mansions.

In the case of Arab pilots, which we are studying, this astronomical lore was integrated in various degrees with a pre-existing, or perhaps rather overlapping, body of mythical knowledge which brought the stars in direct relation to everyday life in countless ways. Similar integrations can be observed in Indian and Far Eastern astronomical literature, as layer upon historical layer of celestial knowledge blended into an ever enriched tapestry. No small part of the reward in studying premodern nautical literature lies in realising how many different astronomies can be derived from the same stars—as if an archaic science haunts us, silently winking an eye at us from an immemorial past. [JA]