Sources
Information about early Arab astronomical traditions is scattered throughout collections of poetry, rhymed prose, celestial almanacs and even Qur’anic commentaries. With the onset of the Abbasid period of Islam (750 CE), there arose an abiding interest in translating foreign sciences into Arabic. The influx of these new materials brought about a need to record many of the earlier Arab traditions and cultural knowledge. The genre of anwa’ books takes up the subject of seasonal forecasting on the basis of setting or rising stars. More than 50 authors composed an anwa’ book during the period 750-1050 CE, but only a small number of these are extant and complete.
- Qutrub (d. 821 CE)Qutrub (d. 821 CE)
- Ibn Qutayba (d. 889 CE)Ibn Qutayba (d. 889 CE)
- As-Sufi (d. 986 CE)As-Sufi (d. 986 CE)
- Ibn Qutayba (d. 889 CE)Ibn Qutayba (d. 889 CE)
The earliest complete extant work of the anwa’ genre is Kitab al-azmina wa talbiyat al-jahiliya (The Book of Seasons and the Consecrating Prayers of the Age of Ignorance) by Abu ‘Ali Muhammad b. al-Mustanir, known in his time as Qutrub. (d. 821 CE). Qutrub was a philologist and Qur’anic commentator of Persian origin, and in his anwa’ book, his focus is to explain the meanings of numerous astronomical and meteorological terms. As one of the earliest works of this kind, Kitab al-azmina wa talbiyat al-jahiliya includes multiple star calendars that demonstrate the multivalent conceptions of these systems in Qutrub’s day.
By far, the most extensive surviving work of the anwa’ genre is the Kitab al-anwa’ (The Book of Rain Stars) of Abu Muhammad ‘Abdallah b. Muslim al-Dinawari, known as Ibn Qutayba (d. 889). Also a Persian, Ibn Qutayba was a reknowned philologist and grammarian whose intent in his book is to demonstrate the completeness of Arab astronomical knowledge without the need for adopting foreign (especially Greek) sciences. With this intent, Kitab al-anwa’ includes hundreds of references to poetry and rhymed prose to attest to the long usage of astronomical and meteorological terms among the Arabs even prior to the advent of Islam.
The astronomer Abu’l-Husayn ‘Abd al-Rahman b. ‘Umar as-Sufi (d. 986) composed the first extant astronomical work in Arabic in which star maps appear, Kitab suwar al-kawakib ath-thamaniya wa’l-arba’in (The Book of the 48 Images of the Constellations). This book as a whole does not actually fall within the realm of the anwa’ genre, as it is not at all concerned with seasonal timings. As-Sufi wrote his book to correct the record of stellar magnitudes within Ptolemy’s Almagest, but in doing so he records both contemporary and ancient Arabic names for the stars within the bounds of each Greek constellation and therefore does contain a lot of information concerning the anwa’.