1848.] Ibn QotmjbaKs Adab al Kdtib* on Arabic Astronomy. 673 



It seems that the mansions of the moon must he considered as a 

 division of the ecliptic by which the progress of the sun through the 

 vastness of the heavens is measured, and the time of its annual 

 revolution divided into twenty-eight parts or solar months. The motion 

 of the moon has furnished this division. From the observation of the 

 same stars from which the Arabs learned what solar month of the year 

 was, they could also learn the date of the lunar month and even the 

 hour of the night. The lunar mansions were the almanac and dial of 

 the illiterate children of the desert, and they are probably their own 

 invention. As a more precise knowledge of them may be of historical 

 interest, I insert here another passage of Wa£wai (Lib. I. cap. 3) on 

 the subject : — 



" As the Arabs (Bedouins) had no knowledge of the results which 

 the ancients had obtained by their observations of the fixed stars, and 

 as they were not acquainted with the stars which might enable them to 

 define the seasons of the year and to fix the time, they observed certain 

 stars and attempted to ascertain by experience to what extent the heli- 

 acal setting of every star was true or deceptive (in predicting the wea- 

 ther), and what influence the stars exercise on the temperament and 

 constitution of man when they rise or set. They did not however 

 attend to the signs of the zodiac in their observations, but they divided 

 the sphere of the fixed stars into a number of parts, equal to the number 

 of days of a revolution of the moon, that is to say into twenty-eight. 

 They looked for a sign to mark the distance which the moon passes in 

 twenty-four hours; and called it "stage" (mansion). They began 

 with the two stars in the horn of Aries, called shara^an, then they 

 looked out for another star by which to might mark the distance which 

 the moon goes in 24 hours, starting from the sharaftm, and this star is 

 bo^ayn. After the bofoyn comes the tharayya, &c. It is the Arabs 

 who gave names to these stars without reference to the division or signs 

 of the Zodiac, thus the haq'ah is one of the stars marking the limit 

 of a mansion of the moon, yet it is not in the Zodiac but in Orion. 

 The term mansion is taken by exact writers in the meaning of a portion 

 of the heavenly sphere equal to one-fourth of one-seventh, i. e» one 

 twenty-eighth of the circumference. It is not more than this, for the 

 moon, in her mean course arrives on the 29 th day at the spot from 

 which she started. Mansion means originally the respective arc and not 



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