Stowasser - The Day Begins at Sunset: Perceptions of Time in the Islamic World

Barbara Freyer Stowasser was, until her death in 2012, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. She also held the Sultanate of Oman Chair in Arabic and Islamic Literature at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, was a former Director of the Center, and served as President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) between 1998 and 1999. Her previous books include Women in the Qur'an, Traditions and Interpretation (1994).

In her enjoyable new book, Barbara Freyer Stowasser demonstrates with great clarity the centrality of time within Islamic culture whether the time of prayers, of feast-days, of sacred months or of centennial years and shows how understandings of chronology integrated the practices of Islam into a cosmos measured by subtle astronomical calculations and observations. The regularities of time provided a unifying structure for the whole of the Islamic realm, while the lunar year, slowly revolving through the seasons, served to distinguish Islam from its neighbours. As the author authoritatively and readably shows, a fascination with time appears in the work and thinking of Islams mathematicians, historians and encyclopaedists, and is therefore a topic of central interest to the student of Muslim science, history and literature.

Charles Burnett, Professor of the History of Islamic Influences in Europe, The Warburg Institute, University of London

The Day Begins at Sunset is a unique work of scholarly synthesis and lively narration that offers a wealth of historical, social, and religious information about timekeeping and time perceptions in the Islamic world, past and present. It also has much to say about the long coexistence in Islamic societies of serious scientific inquiry and theological interpretation before the impingement on the Islamic world of Western imperial and colonial power and its attendant cultural assumptions. The late Barbara Freyer Stowassers astute use of the great Muslim polymath, al-Biruni, as the principal lens through which the reader can follow her wide-ranging explorations adds a still further dimension to this learned, engaging excursion into science, religion, and history. The book is an admirable final chapter to a perceptive scholars corpus of work.

William A. Graham, Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University

Well presented, well informed and well researched, the book is readable and interesting, and I will recommend it to my students. The Day Begins at Sunset engagingly treats a subject for which there is little accessible published material.

Robert Hoyland, Professor of Islamic History, University of Oxford

Throughout human history people have devised ways of measuring the passage of time. The Day Begins at Sunset focuses upon solutions adopted in the Islamic world, but a reader will be introduced to the earlier SumerianBabylonian, Roman, Jewish, and Christian calendrical systems as well. The author has placed at the centre of her book the remarkable writings of al-Biruni, an early 11th-century polymath, the uncontested medieval authority on time and timekeeping, and a thoughtful and influential voice on the relationship between science and religion. By structuring her volume in this way, the late Professor Stowasser was able to transform a complex topic into an engaging and highly readable book one that provides an excellent, reliable introduction to Islamic science in general as well as early Islamic perceptions of time. The Day Begins at Sunset is highly recommended as a starting point for anyone wanting a non-technical guide to pre-modern Islamic science and its relationship to religion.

Emilie Savage-Smith, FBA, Professor of the History of Islamic Science, University of Oxford

Sadly, this is Barbara Freyer Stowassers last insightful study on Muslim civilisation. Here, the subject matter is Time. The Muslim vision of time is God-centred and based on the Qur'an. Time moves in the suns rhythm measuring night and day, while from the moons phases months and years are calculated: all signs of divine power and providence. While measurement required scientific knowledge, scriptural exegesis necessitated religious knowledge. Stowassers central point is that many Muslim theologians and scientists viewed both sources as mutually independent forms of intellectual enterprise, thereby preserving the truth and validity of each in proclaiming the divine secrets of Gods creation. The crucial chapters of her study are devoted to a stimulating examination of the works of Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni (d. ca. 1050), mathematician and ethnographer extraordinaire, and his description of the calendars of the ancients including those of the Greeks, Persians, Christians and Jews.

David Waines, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies, Lancaster University

Published in 2014 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

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Copyright 2014 Hans-Andreas Stowasser and Michael Sebastian Stowasser

The right of Barbara Freyer Stowasser to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All references to websites were correct at the time of writing.

Library of Middle East History 48

ISBN: 978 1 78076 542 6

eISBN: 978 0 85773 554 6

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

To my sons, Andy and Mike; their wives, Teresa and Jill; my grandchildren, Franci, Margaret, Leanna, and David; my sisters, Ulli Hauck and Brigitte Schauenburg; my colleagues at Georgetown University; and all of my students over these many years.

CONTENTS

PART I

HISTORY, RELIGION, POLITICS
AND TIME

CHAPTER 1

CALENDARS: AN INTRODUCTION

Calendars are Cultural Artefacts

In the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, the interval between Corpus Christi and Advent is called Ordinary Time. On a recent Sunday in late June, the parochial vicar Father Joseph Kelly, SJ, of St. Malachy's Church in Manhattan, New York, used his homily at the Actor's Chapel and the day's newsletter to reflect on the date:

For quite a few Sundays now, we have had major feasts. Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, and last week, Corpus Christi. Now we move into that period most dreadfully designated as Ordinary Time. (I often wonder what clerical bureaucrat thought that one up?) Quite frankly I don't know what it means, because time, Ordinary or otherwise, is a most precious gift of God which makes me think that this might be a good Sunday to look at the simple word time. What words do we use when we talk of time? We bide our time, some unfortunates do time, others of us put in time, we look back nostalgically at old times, and perhaps most awful of all we kill time, while our military people mark time. And yet what a precious gift it is. It slips through our fingers so quickly, and the less you have, the quicker it slips. None of us know our allotted time.