skycultures/arabic_indigenous/description.md
The Arabic sky culture displays the indigenous star knowledge of the ancient Arabs living in the Arabian Peninsula prior to the Greek astronomy influence in the ninth century.
The star knowledge of the ancient Arabs had been recorded and preserved in old poetry and in the old works of Arab philologists and lexicographers of the Islamic civilization. Many books were written on the subject of star knowledge and anwāʾ [Arabic الأنواء], the Arabic knowledge of meteorology. The editors of Ibn Qutaybah's Kitāb al-Anwāʾ (9th century) listed twenty-four books on this subject written mostly between early eighth and tenth century[#2]. The only completely preserved text is that of Ibn Qutaybah, but later scholars had quoted many of the earlier texts. One of the most significant works that recorded the indigenous Arab star names is the Book of the stars written in ~ 964 AD by the prominent astronomer: al-Ṣūfī, where he identified the indigenous Arab star names with the respective Ptolemaic stars of the Greek constellations[#5].
The ancient Arabs gave names to single stars, star couples, an area in the sky, and particular shape of a group of stars. Single stars were named after a human figure or a desert animal, Arcturus is al-Simāk al-Rāmiḥ, meaning: The High one with the spear. Canopus is Suhayl, a proper name of a man. We have also stars named: The Caracal and the Kid (the young goat). If two stars of comparable brightness are close to each other, they are given a common name like: The two Calves, the Two Wolves, The Two doves. Sometimes an area is named after a group of animals. The brighter stars are adult animals, and the faint ones are the young animals like: The Hyenas and their youngsters, The horses and the foals. Particular shapes of stars were given names like the Scorpion, The lion, al-Ǧawzā’ which is a proper name of a woman for Orion stars. Other asterisms are given names according to legends and stories.
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