Kuwaiti Researcher Reveals How Arabs Read Time from the Sky

Before the advent of modern maps and digital clocks, Arab societies read the sky to determine directions, understand weather patterns, and identify agricultural seasons. Stars were not merely bright points in the night sky; they formed a knowledge system transmitted through language, poetry, and oral traditions. From this perspective, Kuwaiti researcher specializing in ancient Arab astronomy Badriya Al-Salem explores, in her project “Resistant Atlas: Names of the Sun,” how the sky became a source of knowledge and how this ancient heritage can find its place in today’s world through art and technology. Al-Salem explained that her relationship with astronomy began with awe at the beauty of the sky, before evolving into an inquiry into its connection with cultural memory. As she delved deeper into the field, she discovered that stars were not distant from the daily lives of Arab communities but were present in language, heritage, and collective memory. In an interview with CNN, the Kuwaiti researcher noted that this presence extended to personal details, such as her name “Badriya,” which is linked to the night of the full moon. It also appeared in inherited Arabic expressions containing deep astronomical knowledge, such as “between the earth and the Pleiades,” a phrase she heard since childhood without realizing that “the Pleiades” refers to a real star cluster that rises in the winter sky. Al-Salem stated that language was the most important means of preserving and transmitting this knowledge, particularly among societies that relied on desert nomadism, as it could carry vast amounts of information across time without a physical medium. In Arabic, words were not merely descriptions; they became stories and mental images that connected humans to their surrounding environment. Arabs, who needed to navigate and measure time in an environment changing due to winds and sands, transformed the night sky into a system of narratives that helped them read the stars and memorize their positions. Al-Salem cites the star “Sirius” (Suhayl), which in Arab heritage is associated with human qualities inspired by its brightness and position in the sky; it was personified as a strong and emotional figure, while its descent near the southern horizon was interpreted as isolation or shyness. These traits were not mere fantasy but a clever means of fixing the star’s behavior in memory and linking it to navigation, agriculture, and seasons. Al-Salem launched her project “Resistant Atlas: Names of the Sun” from questions about how contemporary humans understand time and space, particularly through digital devices and systems that offer a unified, linear view of time and space. She explained that these questions led her to investigate how humans organized their lives before the emergence of modern computational systems, and how ancient societies developed precise methods to understand time and space through observing the environment and the sky. The project’s title carries multiple layers of meaning; the word “Resistant” refers to an attempt to rethink rigid, linear modern perceptions of time and space, while “Atlas” reflects the idea of mapping knowledge resulting from the relationship between humans and their environment, and the continuous dialogue between people and the sky, sun, moon, stars, and natural phenomena. The project combines articles, maps, illustrations, tools, and installations, aiming to decode the sky and rebuild our relationship with it. “Names of the Sun,” meanwhile, is the first chapter of the project, which examines 41 Arabic names for the sun. Analyzing these names revealed that they are not merely poetic expressions but carry layers of knowledge; a single name can simultaneously convey information about size, altitude, sensation, season, and time of day.