Canopus: Gentle Celestial Key

Known in Arabic as Suhayl, Canopus is the second-brightest star in the night sky, second only to Sirius, and it has a cultural importance which it would be hard to exaggerate. In Islamic civilisation in particular, it is notable because the major axis of the Kaaba is aligned with its rising point.

As we read on through the nautical rhumbs, Suhayl has a prominent place, forming part of a diametrical pair which is closest to the poles. Suhayl would be practically a South Pole indicator, while its complementary opposites (al-Na‘sh, the Plough) would be North Pole indicators. Ibn Mājid explains: “Young and old among the people of the desert and the people of the sea, everyone knows Suhayl by sight.” And he adds: “Nothing is better than Suhayl to take altitude measures among what has been set in motion by the Turner of the Spheres (Tornator Caelorum, al-Dawwār). Southern peoples use it to unlock the routes to all of India and Arabia.”

Finding the South Pole,
approx. below the word “Cross” in the image,
between Canopus, Achernar and the Cross.

It is remarkable that the name Suhayl, a star of such mighty practical importance, should mean literally “the little easy-going one”. As a diminutive of sahl, it has a range of related meanings, all familiar names of gentleness. As we had seen with the Pleiades (Thurayyā, Soraya, Zorayda?), Suhayl has also the discreet yet pervasive distinction of being used as a personal given name; it is a common male name not only in Arabic, but in Urdu, Persian and Turkish as well.

This archaic, indeed pre-Islamic, custom of using star names for children makes you wonder about similar practices across cultures. Apart from Spanish Sol and Luna, Sun and Moon, which are used as girls’ names (in Arabic, Shams is for men while Qamar is for women), I can only recall literary characters like Lyra Belacqua (His Dark Materials) and Sirius Black and his family of Harry Potter’s characters. I wonder if our readers can tell us about other people named after celestial bodies? Not sure Arthur would count… Any Betelgeuses or Achernars you are acquainted with!? [JA]

The Greeting Stars

When speaking of “stellar navigation”, “celestial navigation”, or “astronavigation”, the implicit understanding is that of a sophisticated observational system. Long nights, repetitive activities, meticulous recording and so on. But Ibn Majid tries to shows us a different aspect of the relation between the pilot and the stars when he says: “It would be fair to use the following image to speak about me,

The radiance of the stars became so fond of me
That they would ask about me whenever I went out of sight.
When arriving they would say hello to me,
And when departing they would wave goodbye.”

Joniton, fourth son of Noah, the First Astronomer
(World Chronicle, 15th c., J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 33, fol. 12)

Can we derive any lesson from such a poetic utterance, to further our understanding of early modern technoscience? Perhaps only this, which we had already touched upon when discussing embodied knowledge: the relation between the expert “artist” (harking back to the technical sense of Latin ars) is multilayered and multifaceted, and hard to fathom. It seems clear enough, in any case, that unwavering attention to an object of knowledge, even something as inconceivably distant and alien as the stars—they who know neither joy nor pain of birth and death—brings about an epistemological shift. The cold object is no longer that cold, the relation not so distant… suddenly, one day, that distant star may wink at you.

This is not quite unrelated to the observer effect in physics, playing out in subtle overtones which were accounted for in medieval science but are fundamentally dismissed nowadays. Somewhere between the detached and practical stargazing, and the loving company of the celestial bodies, a different kind of “objectivity” arises. The cosmos is no longer altogether distinct from the observer, but a “wondrous cosmos” in which “all observers, from the farmer to the astronomer to the monk, had something to learn from watching the sky.” [JA]

Signs on the Horizons

One of the best known Qur’anic verses related to navigation is 41:35, “We shall show them Our signs upon the horizons and within themselves, until it be clear to them that He is the Real” (the change of grammatical person: “Our signs"/“He is”, is a typical Qur’anic figure (iltifāt), as if emphasizing that the “person” is always the One and Only).

As we have seen in recent posts, and as is made obvious in the design of the wind rose, the nautical rhumbs establish a direct relation between the central subject, i.e. the pilot or the vessel itself, and the peripheral object deployed in 360 degrees of possibility, divided in a conventional number of directions, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64. Seen on the two-dimensional pattern, as seen from a stationary position, the horizon is the utmost limit, the non plus ultra. The natural state of the landlubber is this beyond-less confinement, where the signs on the horizon are informative, recreational, interesting, even fascinating.

But there are the travellers, those who move on. And there are the astronomers, the true astrologers who have intimate knowledge of the movement of the cosmos, of the law of movement, whereby mighty lights rise from the horizon, run their course, and set, inexorably.

For such pilots and knowers of the spheres, the signs are an existential reality, a living knowledge: “beyond” and “self” merged, the horizons are not a limit, but a stage of the journey—onward they sail, guided without error by the stars whose love is in their heart. For them, in their journey Home, the horizons from within themselves reverberate encircling one another, circle upon circle upon circle… [JA]