Arab Stars

What a great example of a misleading title! The stars I'm talking about aren't the actors and actresses or the singers of the Arab world; they are the actual stars in the night sky that many of us Arabs tend to forget that many of them possess Arabic names! In fact, a lot of the sciences we learn today carry Arabic names. What? did you think the 'Al' behind Algebra, Alchemy, Algorithm, and Alcohol was all convention?

I decided to finally take that elusive Astronomy class at University this semester. It felt like a lot of knowledge that had been hidden in my brain from centuries long had just been burst out into a projector screen in front of me. Arab and Muslim society was on top of the world; something I had already known, but knowing it and seeing, learning, and wondering about it is a whole different thing.

I found out that there are over 1000 stars that have Arabic origin names, of course today scientists prefer to give them a Greek classification. One star in particular made me take a specific interest in it. 'Kappa Orionis', of the Orion constellation, carries the Arabic name 'Saiph' or 'Saiph Al Jabbar' which is in the position of The Hunter's sword. I felt very good about myself that my name was somewhere in the sky. What I also found out was that the whole constellation had Arabic names such as 'Mintaka', 'AlNilam'. 'Rigel', and 'Betelgeuse'. If you're interested in Harry Potter (which I'm not), Bellatrix is up there somewhere!

Here's some interesting Wikipedia links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_star_names

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_loanwords_in_English