1838.] quoted in the Mohit. Ill 



by the Arabic appellation zalim, which signifies * a male ostrich,' not 

 much differing from grus ' a crane.' 



Canopus is too notorious a star to admit of any doubt, except to the 

 perjured Arab tribe ! but its annual variation is too small to yield fair 

 data for calculating the epoch of the tables. 



For the last of the list, Salibdr, I before wavered between <* Eridani 

 and v Argus, and I should be able to propound a plausible excuse for the 

 Arab tribe's mistake, (were the latter to be found correct,) in the disco- 

 very lately made by Sir John Herschell at the Cape, of the variable 

 brilliancy of this star ' which in a few months had come to surpass all the 

 stars of the first magnitude except Sirius, Canopus, and « Centauri*:' 

 but when tried by the test of the minimum errors it is found wanting. 

 In 1839 it has S. Declin. 58° 50', with annual increase of 18.8 seconds, 

 so that in the 14th century it would be 5 degrees too far north, ; whereas 

 -yAJLak.) or Achernar precisely corresponded with the ^Arabic declina- 

 tion in 1288 A. D. The Baron's suggestion of Alphard (£ Hydra?) 

 is quite untenable, that star having only 7° 57' south declination. 



The present section in addition to the above valuable information, 

 tells us why the south pole has been called Soheilf . It is a contrac- 

 tion of qutb isoheil, or pole of Canopus, to distinguish it from kutb ijdh, 

 the north pole. 



There is no latitude in which the several stars, as now determined can 

 be made to rise and fall in their assigned positions on the horizon : the 

 names were purely conventional, yet in the latitude of 15° north a good 

 many of them find their proper places, — as if the system had been first 

 framed at Loheia in the Red Sea, Saiban of the ancients, which is the 

 starting point of all Sim's voyages to India, and we have seen many of 

 the terms quoted as " used by the Indian masters." 



I should here correct a serious mistake made in my former notice, in 

 supposing that the ancient Arabs like the modern navigators, or the 

 Hindus, considered the polar star to be immovable. The chapter before 

 us proves that its polar distance was known and measured, as well as its 

 secular variation and the precession of the equinoxes. Their accuracy 

 only was deficient for the want of good instruments: thus in the tables 

 of Muhammad Tizini published in Sfiarpe's SyntagmaDissertationum, 

 T. Hyde, we find the polar distance of Judda in A. H. 940 or A. D. 

 1533 registered as 26' further from the pole than in Sidi's work, instead 

 of nearer. In general however Mah. Tizini's places of the stars lie 

 between Sidi's and the modern tables. Thus, fi Ursae minoris is 



* See Proceedings of the Asiatic Society, page 463 of this volume, 

 t See note on Maldive compass, vol. V. p. 764. 

 5e2 



