Arabic

On Friday 11th of May, 2018, I gave the second part of my presentation on Islamic Astronomy's Legacy in Arabic Origin Of Modern Star Names. This was for the KW RASC.

Topics include

On Friday 13th of April, 2018, I gave a presentation at the KW RASC on Medieval Islamic Astronomy and its influence on Renaissance Europe.

Topics include

On Friday 27th of January, 2018, I gave a presentation at the KW RASC on Al-Sufi's Book Of Fixed Stars.

The book is the first illustrated pictorial star atlas, and was very influential for centuries after it was authored. It spread widely from central Asia, throughout the Middle East, and to Europe. It was translated into many languages.

Here is the presentation slides, and audio recording:

When an Arabic speaking person starts to get interested in Astronomy, he will immediately notice that many stars have Arabic sounding names.

For example, the other day, I was in the backyard with a 20 year old relative. I was

The reason for this is historic, and has to do with how the knowledge of sky with its constellations, and stars moved from one civilization to the next. First, Ancient Egypt to Babylon, then to the Greeks, then translated into Arabic during the Islamic golden age, and from there to Europe via Latin by yet more translation.

Having worked with many people from India and Pakistan in the 1990s, I was often fascinated by words that sounded Arabic in origin. When asking about the meaning, they were indeed Arabic. And I could detect more words in the few Hindi Bollywood movies that I have seen as well.

Arabic influence on Hindi may have been via several avenues. One was via Farsi (Persian) as an intermediate, having been the language of the court for the Mughal emperors. Another was through Muslim scholars using these words from Arabic texts and they made their way into the vernacular.

Update 2011-09-02

For the Xperia X10, when upgrading the software using Sony's PC Companion, you will get full Arabic support on the phone, with a beautiful font, and no glitches. The only drawback is the phone is unrooted, and therefore you lose functionality of apps that require root (e.g. Titanium Backup, ShootMe), and have the bloated apps that autostart (Timescape, Moxier Mail, ...etc.)