Rising Star Paradigms: Encoding Seasonal Times in Arabic Sajʿa Rhymes

Abstract

An ancient art form which may have predated classical Arabic poetry, Arabic rhymed prose—a piece of which is called sajʿa—contains a rhyme at the end of each phrase, but no internal meter, making it easy to memorize and transmit orally. This form of Arabic literature found many uses in pre-Islamic times for orations and in early Islamic times for both religious formulaic practices and secular aphorisms. Among these was a growing set of maxims that used rhymed prose to describe the seasonal conditions that occurred at the heliacal rising of a star or asterism. These pieces of rhymed prose addressed changes in the weather itself, as well as floral, faunal, and social behaviour that occurred during this time. This collection of astronomically-inspired rhymed prose grew over time to incorporate more star names and new rhymed phrases within many of the pieces. This paper draws from original Abbasid-era Arabic sources—including Quṭrub (d. 821 CE), Ibn Qutayba (d. 889 CE) and his contemporary Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 896 CE), and al-Marzūqī (d. 1030 CE)—to provide insight into the content and structure of these pieces of rhymed prose, using the stars of the Scorpion (al-ʿaqrab) as a representative sample.