Heavenly Bodies and Their Accidents

As we continue our weekly readings of Sulayman al-Mahri’s Mir’at al-salak (Mirror of Travellers; see our previous post), wondering about the relation between cosmography and geography and navigation, as in one of the recent RUTTER Blog posts, we have come across an interesting live example of “saving the phenomena”, straight from the 16th-century Arabian Peninsula.

The context is Ptolemaic through-and-through, with al-Mahrī explaining in Chapter 5 what relates to the “accidents” of the planets in their courses. He takes a while to describe the mechanics of planetary movement, dwelling on the details of retrogradation which were so fundamental to the whole Ptolemaic edifice. So we need to brush up conscientiously on our pre-modern astronomy terms in Arabic, the epicycles, deferents, with their apogees and perigees, to follow carefully the exposition. But then, after a thorough explanation, we come across the following,

Now, it is obvious that the heavenly bodies bring to completion the circular movement inside their orb without experiencing any alteration that touches on the orb. For their movement is neither faster nor slower, nor do they go backwards on their path, or halt their movement in the actual fact itself (nafs al-amr). But all this has to do with the relation between our vision (hasab ru’yatinā) and the composition of the movements (tarkīb al-harakāt).

While it has become commonplace to cite Aristotle on the matter of “saving the phenomena”, it is well known that from the earliest times of Greek philosophy there was a tension between the perfect motion of the spheres—cf. Timaeus, “time is the moving image of eternity”—and the perceived irregularity of the astronomical phenomena. Most notable and seminal are the Platonic passages in Timaeus, Epinomis and the Laws, but for example, and more directly astronomical, here is Geminus of Rhodes (1st century BC),

The Pythagoreans, who were the first to apply themselves to investigations of this kind, assumed the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets to be circular and uniform. They would not admit, with reference to things divine and eternal, any disorder such as would make them move at one time more swiftly, at one time more slowly, and at another time stand still.

Ptolemy (Almagest III, 1 and XIII, 2) is very clear about preserving as much as possible the simplicity of the models (Gr. hypotheseis), and the Middle Ages saw countless back and forth arguments on this matter, which might be said to be a conversation, at times heated!, between cosmology and cosmography, what we know to be de iure, and what we perceive to be de facto. It is all a series of disputationes maybe, lively and truly philosophical. How remarkable, then, that an unassuming Yemeni pilot of the 16th century, man of praxis and adventure, should join the conversation, echoing in his clear, matter-of-fact discourse, the arguments of so many centuries before him—from Pythagoras to al-Mahrī, just a blink of a scientific eye! [JA]

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]

Nautical Melothesia

Melothesia is not a word you encounter every day at the supermarket, and yet it names an idea that never ceased to accompany civilization until the advent of our modernity. Straight from the Greek μελοθεσία, the “assignment of parts” or the “apportioning of limbs”, it refers to the vital correspondence between the parts of the human body and the divisions of the sky; it is the immemorial macrocosm-microcosm doctrine, and one of the applications of the Emerald Tablet’s famous opening sentence: “As above, so below.” There are famous images about it across cultures, most known to us as one or other kind of “Zodiac Man” image, the homo signorum.

One of the best known depictions of melothesia,
from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, 15th c.

Melothesia was not limited to correspondence of the body with the duodecimal solar zodiac signs. There was also a nakshatra-purusha in Indian tradition, the “Lunar Stations Man”, i.e. based on the lunar zodiac division of 27/28 divisions; and other cultures had analogous correspondences based on different divisions.

27 lunar stations on the body of Vishnu.

Melothesia was generally associated with medicine, martial arts, music… but in early modern Arab navigation we also have a fascinating analogue and a true nautical melothesia based on the division of the horizon in 32 rhumbs. The basic practice, details of which we will be reading about during the coming weeks, is that the ship, instead of the body, is virtually divided in 32 “directions” projected from the compass card, as if the wind rose were projected around the ship’s deck. For example, if we assign the north to the bow, then the stern will correspond to the south. This way, the parts of the vessel are mapped onto the directions, and by focusing on a part of the vessel, a certain destination will be reached.

This strictly practical application of the immemorial macrocosm-microcosm doctrine illustrates the better-known astrological and alchemical doctrines making them more concretely understandable. In fact, it seems to echo the astrological adage: “character is destiny,” which then, put in navigation terms, might be: “The disposition of your rhumbs will determine your destination.” Destiny–Destination, perhaps just one among many pairs of crucial terms of ancient cosmologies which are illuminated by an unbiased study of medieval technoscience. [JA]

Us vs. Them: Early Modern Nautical Othering

Reading through the initial pages of chapter 4 of the Fawā’id, we came last week across a remarkable passage on Mediterranean/European vs. Indian Ocean/Arabic nautical techniques. The Westerners are in fact called here by Ibn Mājid “the people of the Egyptian abodes”:

…they have the compass, and in it they have lines, and marks for miles, and their rhumbs are only sixteen… We use thirty-two rhumbs… and they are incapable of understanding our level of attainment, whereas we do reach as far as their knowledge goes and we can sail their ships, for the Indian Ocean is connected to the Atlantic Ocean (al-Bahr al-Muhīt), and it has a knowledge recorded in writings and stellar altitude measures…

Leaving aside other technical details for a future occasion, let us focus on these final lines, where we find one striking assertion and one subtly insightful statement.

The first one is striking if we consider that Ibn Mājid is writing this probably in the 1490s, just as the Portuguese started rounding the Cape (Bartolomeu Dias, 1488), and yet he takes as a given the connection of the two oceans. This is no novelty if we remember that al-Birūnī (11th century), already spoke clearly of this connection with al-Bahr al-Muhīt. Literally the Circumambient, or All-Encompassing Sea, this was the most frequent Arabic name for the Atlantic—while still carrying echoes of the archaic notion of a Universal Surrounding body of water, what the Greeks called Okeanos. We wonder anyway, had Ibn Mājid also had news of the Dias expedition?

Sebastian Münster 1554 map

The second statement is this idea that there was a written body of Indian Ocean nautical science, and that it was this, combined with a certain knowledge of astronavigation, which gave Arab sailors the edge over those “Egyptians”. We have by now got used to Ibn Mājid boasting about his own writings, but here it does certainly sound as if he is referring also to a traditional, well known, nautical corpus. Of these possibly lost writings we have, alas, only the faintest traces left in medieval Arabic literature… what a sunken Atlantis of maritime treasures! [JA]