USE OF THE GALAXY AS A TOOL FOR SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL ORIENTATION DURING THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD AND UP TO THE 15TH CENTURY

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Andreas Eckart
Keyword(s):  
Milky Way ◽  
The Other ◽  
Temporal Orientation ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic

AbstractWe study to what extent the Milky Way was used as an orientation tool at the beginning of the Islamic period covering the 8th to the 15th century, with a focus on the first half of that era. We compare the texts of three authors from three different periods and give detailed comments on their astronomical and traditional content. The text of al-Marzūqī summarises the information on the Milky Way put forward by the astronomer and geographer ʾAbū Ḥanīfa al-Dīnawarī. The text makes it clear that in some areas the Milky Way could be used as a geographical guide to determine the approximate direction toward a region on Earth or the direction of prayer. In the 15th century, the famous navigator Aḥmad b. Māǧid describes the Milky Way in his nautical instructions. He frequently demonstrates that the Milky Way serves as a guidance aid to find constellations and stars that are useful for precise navigation on land and at sea. On the other hand, Ibn Qutayba quotes in his description of the Milky Way a saying from the famous Bedouin poet Ḏū al-Rumma, which is also mentioned by al-Marzūqī. In this saying the Milky Way is used to indicate the hot summer times in which travelling the desert was particularly difficult. Hence, the Milky Way was useful for orientation in space and time and was used for agricultural and navigational purposes.

Idrah'ū l-hudūd bi-l-shubuhāt: When Lawful Violence Meets Doubt

Hawwa ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 208-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maribel Fierro
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Ibn Hazm

AbstractThis article explores the origin and diffusion of the legal saying, which stated that God's sanctions were not to be applied in cases where there was room for doubt (idra'ū l-hudūd bi-l-shubuhāt), and how it was transformed into a Prophetic saying that was employed mainly by Hanafis and Mālikīs, and rejected by the Hanbalīs and the Zāhirī Ibn Hazm. Behind these developments there is the tension between two equally compelling needs in the early Islamic period: on the one hand, the desire to avoid as much as possible imposition of the severe hadd penalties; on the other hand, the fact that such avoidance usually played in favour of the rich and the powerful.

scholarly journals The Milky Way: summary and outlook

1985 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 635-639
Author(s):  
Jeremiah P. Ostriker
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Milky Way ◽  
Oblate Spheroid ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Conspicuous Feature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Absorption Of Light ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
The One

First let me review the historical discussions presented during our symposium: the papers by Paul, Gingerich, Hoskin and Smith. I was greatly impressed by the power of abstract human thought in its confrontation with resistant reality. On the one hand we see again and again extraordinary prescience, where abstract beliefs based on little or no empirical evidence–like the island-universe hypothesis–turn out to be, in their essentials, true. Clearly, we often know more than we know that we know. On the other hand, there are repeated instances of resistance to the most obvious truth due to ingrained beliefs. These may be termed conspiracies of silence. Van Rhijn and Shapley agreed about few things. But one of them was that there was no significant absorption of light in the Galaxy. Yet the most conspicuous feature of the night sky is the Milky Way, and the second most conspicuous feature is the dark rift through its middle. What looks to the most untutored eye like a “sandwich” was modeled as an oblate spheroid. These eminent scientists must have known about the rift, but somehow wished it away in their analyses. I find that very curious. Other examples from earlier times abound. We all know that the Crab supernova was seen from many parts of the globe but, though it was bright enough to be detected by the unaided eye in daylight, its existence was never–so far as we know–recorded in Europe. It did not fit in with the scheme of things, so it was not seen.

scholarly journals Understanding the Galaxy

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (S339) ◽  
pp. 50-55
Author(s):  
L. Eyer
Keyword(s):  
Time Domain ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Milky Way ◽  
Radial Velocities ◽  
The Other ◽  
General Overview ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
Disc Bulge ◽  
The One

AbstractThis general overview of our understanding of the Galaxy followed the lines of its main structures (halo, disc, bulge/bar) and emphasized some time-domain astronomy contributions. On the one hand the distance and tangential motions of the stars are essential to that understanding, and are obtained through multi-epoch surveys. On the other hand the chemistry of the stars and their radial velocities are also key elements for mapping the Galactic (sub-)structures, and unravelling their history and evolution. Contemporary surveys are revolutionizing our view of the Milky Way and of galaxies in general. Among those, the Gaia mission excels through its precise astrometry of 1.3 billion stars that populate the Milky Way and beyond, providing the first 3-D view of a major part of the Milky Way.

Scribal Repertoires in Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Early Islamic Period

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern Egypt ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Point Of Departure

This volume deals with the possibility of glimpsing pre-modern and early modern Egyptian scribes, the people who actually produced ancient documents, through the ways in which they organized and wrote those documents. Breaking with the traditional conception of variation in scribal texts as ‘free’ or indicative of ‘corruption’, this volume reconceptualizes scribal variation in pre-modern Egypt from the point of view of contemporary historical sociolinguistics, seeing scribes as agents embedded in particular geographical, temporal, and sociocultural environments. This volume comprises a set of studies of scribal variation, beginning from the well-established domain of scribal variation in pre-modern English as a methodological point of departure, and proceeding to studies of scribal variation spanning thousands of years, from Pharaonic to Late Antique and Islamic Egypt. This volume introduces to Egyptology concepts such as scribal communities, networks, and repertoires, and applies them to a variety of phenomena, including features of lexicon, grammar, orthography, palaeography, layout, and format.

Maritime trade in early Islamic-period glass: New evidence from the Maʻagan Mikhael B shipwreck

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 102903
Author(s):  
Eyal Natan ◽  
Yael Gorin-Rosen ◽  
Agnese Benzonelli ◽  
Deborah Cvikel
Keyword(s):  
Maritime Trade ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Early Islamic

Richard Lavenham and the Cambridge Logic

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 241-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Vincent Spade
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Logical Study

Summary This paper argues that the 14th-century Oxford Carmelite Richard Lavenham was the author of the treatise De syncategorematibus that was used as a textbook in 15th-century Cambridge, a version of which was printed several times in the late 15th and early 16th centuries in the Libellus sophistarum ad usum Cantabrigiensium. The manuscript versions of this treatise differ significantly from one another and from the printed editions, so that the claim of Lavenham’s authorship needs to be carefully considered. The evidence for this claim is described briefly. The identification of the De syncategorematibus in the Cambridge Libellus as Lavenham’s provides the first real indication that Lavenham, whose works testify to the influence of other authors on logico-linguistic studies in late 14th-century Oxford, was himself not without influence as late as the early 16th century. On the other hand, the De syncategorematibus is not a very competent treatise, so that its inclusion as a textbook in the Libellus sophistarum is an indication of the decline of the logical study of language in England during this period. A brief analysis of the contents of the treatise supports this observation.

Islamic Glass in the Making

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadine Schibille
Keyword(s):  
Glass Industry ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Islamic Period ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Plant Ash ◽  
Islamic Glass

The ancient glass industry changed dramatically towards the end of the first millennium. The Roman glassmaking tradition of mineral soda glass was increasingly supplanted by the use of plant ash as the main fluxing agent at the turn of the ninth century CE. Defining primary production groups of plant ash glass has been a challenge due to the high variability of raw materials and the smaller scale of production. Islamic Glass in the Making advocates a large-scale archaeometric approach to the history of Islamic glassmaking to trace the developments in the production, trade and consumption of vitreous materials between the eighth and twelfth centuries and to separate the norm from the exception. It proposes compositional discriminants to distinguish regional production groups, and provides insights into the organisation of the glass industry and commerce during the early Islamic period. The interdisciplinary approach leads to a holistic understanding of the development of Islamic glass; assemblages from the early Islamic period in Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Egypt, Greater Syria and Iberia are evaluated, and placed in the larger geopolitical context. In doing so, this book fills a gap in the present literature and advances a large-scale approach to the history of Islamic glass.

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