At the time of the Arab civilization, between the 10th and the 15th century, they worked a lot on translating the Greek books of astronomy especially the one written by Ptolemy the Alexandrian “Al Magest”. The Arab astronomer al-Sofi al-Razi wrote a book based on the reference of Ptolemy, in which he enumerated the 48 constellations defined by the Greeks. He also recorded all the stars contained in each constellation which amount to about 1200 stars.
In his tables, for every star he gave its longitude and latitude in the sky, as well as its magnitude (brightness). In addition, he gave a sketch for every constellation. As for the names of the constellations, he used those of the Greeks (stemmed from their myths) either transliterated or translated to Arabic. Note that in the Arabic (Muslim) culture, it was not permitted to create myths. That is why he used the naming of the Greek myth personalities as is. The Persian version of the book of al-Razi contains beautiful sketches of the 48 constellations of the sky.
Since the Arabs were masters of poetry before they became masters of astronomy, they used to express everything, including scientific matters, through poetry. A good example is the fascinating work of the son of al-Razi, who composed a poem describing all the constellations and the stars mentioned in the book of al-Razi. Here we have a small part of his poem describing the big dipper representations in the sky:
The Big Dipper
The small dipper is followed by
a set of stars that are very bright
The Romans called it Great Bear
Similar to the previous one (the Little Bear)
In the body of the bear there are four stars
In a form of a square
It revolves around the Polar Star as a wheel
It is known to the Arabs as the coffin
Followed by three stars in line
The eye can identify them easily if the night falls
The one that is close to the square
From this group of three
Is known to the Arabs as Algawz
And so is called by the others (thinkers)
Then this star is followed by another
Star that is very bright and is called
By the Arabs Enaqa and you must know
That just close to it is a fainted small star
The Arabs called it Al Suha
And in other versions Al Sana
After that lies one single star
Very bright called Al Kaid
Under this two groups of stars,
Stars known as the Paws (Al Qufazat)
They are at the edge of this bear
Near to the coffin and the Suha
With this article we complete our survey of the astronomical myth in the three civilizations: Pharaonic, Greek and Islamic.
