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]