1848.] Ibn QotaybaK 's Adah al K&tib* oh Arabic Astronomy. 659 



A passage from Ibn QotaybaK s Adab al Katib'' on Arabic Astronomy ; 

 by A. Sprenger. Communicated by H. M. Elliot, Esq. Foreign 

 Secretary to Govt, of India. 



We find in Arabic two sets of names for stars and constellations. 

 Some are purely Arabic, like (j£*ioli> (the Bear), others are tran- 

 scribed or translated from the Greek, as ya (the Bear), and u»j&±* a 

 corruption of wjty? (Cepheus). In the same manner we find two 

 totally distinct systems. In one (the purely Arabic) we find names for 

 southern stars which are visible only in Arabia and not in Greece or 

 Babylonia ; the ecliptic is divided into twenty-eight parts, and not into 

 twelve, and, consistently, the year has twenty-eight solar months ; many 

 stars have names of which the Greeks have not taken notice, and they 

 are grouped into constellations in a manner different from that of the 

 Greeks. This system of astronomy rests solely on observation without 

 calculation or generalization. 



Greek astronomy seems to have been first introduced among the 

 Arabs by Khalid b. Yazyd, who flourished towards the end of the first 

 century of the Hijrah ; he had several books translated from the Greek 

 into Arabic, and was in possession of a celestial globe which had been 

 made by Ptolemy ;* and so rapidly did this science take root and spread 

 among the followers of Muhammed, that the Moors in Spain were, as 

 early as the ninth century after Christ, the instructors of their northern 

 neighbours. We find in the writings of the venerable Bede the words 

 Alidada x&la*J\ and Almajest ^Jo^&rs which bear witness to the Arabic 

 origin of part of his astronomical knowledge. Ever since the time of 

 Khalid, systematical writers on astronomy follow exclusively the Greek 

 system, whilst encyclopoedic authors mix the two without much discri- 

 mination. The chapter of Ibn Qotaybah on astronomy, though the 

 tendency of the author is philology, is therefore very valuable ; for he 

 carefully excluded every Greek ingredient from it with the exception 



* Kifty'sBibl. Philosophorum, the account of this (or globe) is in Casiri II. 417, 

 but not complete : the psssage ought to run 



^jju U>j> {&}\ <j^i Lgi Loj (j.*) ^ bo (jJU> 13 j Aj^Uaj ^j ^jJ-j (jJdJUL 

 &\m> ^x***^ j (compare the MSS. copy of Kifty in the Lib. of Paris). 



