Forms of Knowledge in the Heart

From our reading last week, this is how Ibn Mājid speaks of the purpose of his astronomical descriptions and teachings,

…for the discerning pilot to find his way through the expanse and the compact of the heavenly spheres… to advance to the ultimate degree and thus picture the sciences in his heart; and to comprehend the turning and dimensions of the spheres through the stars as they rise and set.

The original of this curious “picturing the sciences in the heart” is well worth a closer look. It may be said that the Arabic wording, yusawwiru al-‘ulūm fī qalbihi, is medieval epistemology in a nutshell, particularly in relation to technoscientific knowledge. In describing an accomplished pilot and the perfection of his art, this formula has three components: 1–an object, what is acquired or obtained, al-‘ulūm—plural of ‘ilm, knowledge, often translated as “sciences” or “techniques”; 2–a manner of acquisition, or a process, the verb yusawwiru—a root (s-w-r) we had found used for the “shapes” of constellations, and which has to do with forms, and in particular the Platonic ideas/forms/shapes (suwar aflatuniyyah); 3–a recipient or container for the knowledge acquired, qalb—the “heart” as a centre of consciousness sometimes distinct and sometimes overlapping with ‘aql, “intelect” or “mind”.

So, let’s for now leave aside the first component, and let’s unpack the formula by making explicit some of its implicit nuances. First, like those brilliant shapes in the night sky, the Platonic ideas, or objects of real knowledge, had acquired in Arabic a certain tridimensionality; the root s-w-r has to do with sculpture and pottery: the “ideas” were more like bodies of concrete knowledge. Second, their locus was not so much a breath-like, airy subtance like spiritus, ruh, anima, etc., or an abstract ethereal intellectus or mens, but the liquid/solid fixed centre of the body and the seat of vitality, the heart.

I think we might now rephrase and appropriately paraphrase Ibn Mājid’s formula: “the ultimate degree of your craft is when the knowledges acquired take shape like concrete constellations in the life-giving centre of your existence.” It may sound a bit grandiose, but it does express quite well something that takes place in the day-to-day practice of artisans everywhere: embodied knowledge is not just in the muscles and tendons that know the habitual movements, but also deep down in a central locus from where springs (like blood) the existential knowing joy of a work well made. [JA]

Sewing Paterns in the Sky

In the beginning of this journey through Kitāb al-Fawā’id, we dedicated one of our very first posts to the idea of mimesis. We were reading about navigation history in the first fā’idah, and about how Noah’s ark resembled the Big Dipper. Now, nearly two chapters later, this same idea reappears in relation to the 26th and 27th lunar mansions, al-far‘ān.

In ancient Bedouin tradition, the stars of the great square of Pegasus were imagined to be the upper open end of a well bucket, from which water would be poured. Seen in the night sky, its shape resembles a square where two parallel sides—one southern, the other northern—are the two lunar mansions called al-far‘ān.

However, neither Ibn Mājid nor Indian craftsmanship considered the four stars to form a perfect square. In fact, the difference between the lengths of the southern and northern sides was a crucial one, for it was the pattern upon which were cut the leech (al-dāmān) and the luff (al-jūsh) of a ship’s sail. Following Ibn Mājid, in Indian traditional craft, such a proportional resemblance was no coincidence. The cutting of the sails (tafsīl) was taken directly from the relative positions of these stars—that is, from the lines imagined in al-far‘ān or the great square of Pegasus. [IB]

New Years and Monthless Years

Very aptly, and according to plan, we restarted our reading group last Wednesday with the final session devoted to al-Mahrī’s Qilādah. As far as we are aware, it must be the first time that any shared Western academic initiative has focused on this work in particular, and perhaps even on any work by al-Mahrī. We are grateful to our colleagues in London, Berlin, Leipzig and Abu Dhabi for joining us.

I say very aptly because, as mentioned before, this little treatise is all about the beginning of the year in different calendars, thus about the relations between different calendar eras, and thus about the ever-baffling relations between the paths of sun and moon. To a certain extent it echoes the concerns of computists in medieval Europe for the calculation of the epact.

More specifically, the Qilādat al-shumūs, written by a Muslim pilot, addresses the crucial question of how to reconcile the lunar calendar with the various solar calendars in usage around the Indian Ocean in the late Middle Ages. It was not a theoretical concern, but the very practical one of ascertaining sailing seasons in a region where postponing a departure a few days might have lead to months of delay.

There is one insight from this latest session which has stayed with me after a few days: for most calendrical calculations described, it was necessary to be aware of the number of days elapsed from the first day of the solar year (mā dakhala min al-sanah). This is not unlike the financial “year to date” count, and what in specialised algorithms is nowadays called the dayno. January 11 is simply Day 11, February 1 is Day 32, and March 1 would be Day 60 (i.e. 31+28+1, unless it’s a leap year!) and so on and so forth.

This way of counting the days of the solar year is eminently practical and, remarkably, it does away cleanly with all the layers of mythical and lunar divisions which seem so inseparable from the calendar. It is like stripping the calendar bare and leaving a pure clean sequence of numbers, from 1 to 365. Aniconic, straightforward, arithmetical, almost iconoclastic: what could be more practical?

Calculation table from Wikipedia.

I wonder if knowing that you were born on the 69th day of the year is of any use at all, or a mere idle curiosity. But when a pilot knew that a certain asterism rose in the morning on the 100th day of the year, he knew unequivocally where this fitted within the cycle of the seasons, and where he was within the rhythm of the monsoons and other seasonal winds.

So let’s get ready and practise: What day of the year were you born, sailor? Don’t give me a date, but what is your birthday’s dayno? [JA]

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]

Wipe Out; Learn; Repeat

Some of the lunar mansions, as we have seen before, are of no practical use, but only useful theoretically. That is, quite paradoxically, shiny objects in the sky which are important in spite of their invisibility. They are useful as “placeholders”, like the contours of a glass, perhaps, which are important as limits and containers.

Speaking of one such mansion, al-Na‘a’im, no. 21, Ibn Majid speculates of someone who might have devised a new personal method to use them for navigation, a method which then disappeared (yandarisu) after the inventor’s death, and he concludes: “There isn’t any good in altitude measures that are not put to use.” Let us dwell on the triliteral root (d-r-s) used for the “disappearance” of knowledge, because it combines two apparently opposite meanings of “erasing” and “learning”, and in so doing it illustrates key aspects of knowledge transmission. For example: dars means both “a lesson” and “effacement”—the image is that of the wind blowing signs on the sand, or a teacher wiping out a blackboard.

Like with a glass, where emptiness is a pre-condition of fullness, it seems that a certain kind of erasure is a prerequisite of learning. Science, understood as an accumulation of knowledge through the ages, is built on ignorance, we could say, and not only as an initial mythical tabula rasa, but as ever ascending and ubiquitous instances of unknowing. One apt image for this is the unknown sign, the x in an equation, “what is sought” (al-matlūb), in Arabic.

Another image is the vastness of space, which attracts the explorers and provokes their quests, time and again over the centuries. Two aspects of unknowing: the disappearance due to a break in the transmission is like a vacuum, sterile, an extinguished fire; while the burning “ignorance”, the open question, the “hope” for lands of legend, is an ever-receding horizon, like a plenum and a “matrix of all possibilities.” [JA]

Star-Magical Charm of Scorpio

Reading about the eighteenth lunar mansion, al-Qalb, “The Heart” (of Scorpio), we find once again, but concentrated in one single little passage, several of the themes, the literary and cosmological threads that make the Fawā’id so illuminating and appealing.

On the theme of celestial complementarity, of ever-paired rising and descending stars, which is crucial for the navigational use of the skies, we first find some verses. As earlier in the book, the relations between heavenly bodies are used as pattern and subject of love poetry:

I came across her, when the wind,
Blew on her cheek a curl like the heart of Scorpio.
I asked her for a kiss when we were together,
And she hid from me with a heart of scorpion.

This is presented in the context of Aldebaran (“the eye of the Bull”), just mentioned as the diametrical opposite of this Heart (Antares), and of how both stars are alike in their ill-omened character. But it is Ibn Mājid’s own commentary which brings everything into play: “This poem belongs to permitted magic for love and magnetic attraction of the innermost hearts of men, because of its power, its subtlety, its symbolism, and its correspondence.”

Scorpius (al-‘aqrab) in the sky; a lock of hair (‘aqrab) as a loving memento.

The image of the magically charged lock of hair runs from antiquity in the Song of Songs through to St John of the Cross, and globally across cultures. To write these lines you need a peculiar knowledge of celestial mechanics, to be sure, but also of seemingly unrelated disciplines like prosody, lexicology, astrology, magic, and a keen sense of the concretely human. As Ibn Mājid likes to repeat, nautical knowledge is far from exclusively theoretical, and if anything, it is above all an experiential knowledge.

Traditional navigation skills, in the way they have been preserved by Indian Ocean nautical literature—be it in Arabic or any of the languages of Gujarat, or the Konkan and Malabar coasts—consists of a very synthetic, and not merely systematic, but organic, understanding of man’s situation in the cosmos. Early modern pilots in Ibn Mājid’s lineage were heirs of a tradition beyond our trite dichotomies of humanities vs. science, or arts vs. technology—it was all more roundly human, and for that, so much more enjoyable and rewarding! [JA]