Wonders, Travels and Scientific Knowledge: Reading al-Sirafi

We recently completed our reading of Sulaymān al-Mahrī’s Mirror of Travellers into the Heavenly Spheres (Mir’āt al-sallāk li-kurāt al-aflāk), a primer of astronomy for the use, we believe, of mariners and navigators. Only a few indications relate this text to the several other works by al-Mahrī, which are a totally different genre, that of nautical handbooks, and it is in fact remarkable that it is called Mirror of Travellers, because nothing in its contents is obviously related to travelling. It is a rather dry primer of astronomy, not the usual applied uranography of the navigators, i.e. how to use the risings, settings and relative positions of constellations and stars for orientation, but instead drawing directly from the long tradition of Graeco-Arabic astronomic treatises, like Jaghmini’s Mulakhas fī al-hay’a. But anyway, we have written about it in previous posts here.

Perhaps because we were left yearning for that “travelling” offered by the title, this year we are about to start on a well-known work that will surely deliver on this aspect, Abu Zayd al-Sirafi’s al-Sahīh min akhbār al-bihār wa-‘ajā’ibihā (something like True Stories of the Seas and their Wonders). These travel narratives have been sourced for centuries by historians and geographers, not least students of nautical science, for their valuable data shedding light on the Indian Ocean culture of the Middle Ages.

Delving into this kind of literature with our group, devoted as we are to history of science and technology, makes me think of two ways in which travel and marvels literature benefit the science historian. One is very obvious and it has to do with data and information: simply, there is a wealth of unique or little known phenomena, early mentions of crucial little pieces of information relevant to this or that modern discipline, the name of a place or person, the description of a species, an astronomical occurrence, a linguistic quirk… Very literally, there is no end to the variety.

But there is another less obvious benefit for us in this pursuit: confronting the marvellous, the amazing, incredible and outrageous helps us keep open the door of wonder, to keep a certain kind of humbleness in our gaze. This is directly related to one of the cryptic and haunting aphorisms of Heraclitus: ἐὰν μὴ ἔλπηται ἀνέλπιστον οὐκ ἐξευρήσει ἀνεξερεύνητον ἐὸν καὶ ἄπορον (DK18), “The unexpected shall not be found if it is not expected, for it is beyond searching, impenetrable.”

Good pathbreaking science, the real burning pursuit of knowledge, requires from us always, among other attitudes, the capacity for wonder, the cultivated sense of marvel, a childlike disposition towards the unknown, that open door which might allow us to find otherwise invisible realities. It is as if giving up all bearings with a scientific trust in the unknown. The sense of adventure, of intellectual adventure, “Mi lascio portare dalla fortuna per avere buona fortuna.”

And it is with this intention that we will be starting our semester readings. If you have some Arabic and want to join us, we start this Thursday at 10:00 GMT, on Zoom. You may contact us through the RUTTER website. [Juan Acevedo]