The topic of deep time relations of art science and technology
in the arabic muslim world sounds fascinating as does your
article on anwa which it seems to be very relevant to our
hybrid city topic !! i will try and get a copy of the book
roger
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 9:34 AM, ramon guardans
<ramon.guardans@soundplots.com> wrote:
> Hi Roger, as a followup to your comments on phenology and the lynked dynamics of multiple processes, a beautiful book has just come out
>
> S.Zerlinsky and E.Fürlus (eds) 2010 Variantology4 On Deep Time Relations of Arts Sciences and Technologies in the Arabic-Islamic World and Beyond. Walter König, Köln.The book is very carefully edited and illustrated and contains several good papers , should be in IMERA!.
>
> one paper in it is on the anwa books , the manuals to deal with rising stars, weathers, gardens and food, popular in the 10th century al-andalus,
> wonderful compendia of astronomical concepts and terms (usually in several languages) meterological terms and ideas , gardens food and mood,
>
> I thought you migth like this, i am attaching the latest version i have of the text on the anwa which looks much better in the book of course
>
> be well
> r
RAMON GUARDANS
A Brief Note on the anwā´ Texts of the Late Tenth Century1
1 Manuals for Dealing with Rising Stars, Weather, Gardens, and Food
The anwā´ treatises are compilations of multiple forms of knowledge
that present in one book a
dynamic world system, including lexicographical (star names, plant
names), astronomical,
calendrical, meteorological, phenological, agronomic (what to plant
when), culinary (what to eat
when), and medical descriptions, which underline how the timing of
these processes are related, yet
independent.
The earliest known examples2 were produced in the late 80s/700s by
Arabic scholars in Basra and
Kufa, merging astronomical methods from India, materials from the
Greek tradition, pre-Islamic
concepts and practices, and local information to render them useful to
practitioners in a specific
place.
In this paper I argue that the work on anwā´ books — interesting as it
is in purely historical terms
— can also be seen as a great precursor of current efforts to develop
tools to facilitate the
integration of environmental data from multiple sources, media, and locations.
I shall introduce briefly the outlines of the anwā´ literature, and
then present two examples that are
well documented. From this I shall attempt to project some epistemic
trajectories that might be
meaningful today. The two examples, the famous "Còrdoba Calendar" of
ca. 369/980 by cArīb ibn
Sacīd, and translated by Gerard of Cremona a century later, and the
ca. 403/1013 book Kitāb alanwā
´ wa-l-azmina by Ibn cĀşim, will be described to underline their
relevance and interest in our
times.
The books of
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