Works and Customs in Palestine Volume I/1 E-Book

Gustaf Dalman

• Herausgeber: Al Nasher Technical Services
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Anthropology
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 596

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Volume I; Part 1, Autumn and Winter, dealt with agriculture in general, because the seasons of Palestine could not be described without describing the various farming tasks connected to them, and the religious customs associated with them.

Leseprobe

G. Dalman . Work and Customs in Palestine

I/1

Translation

Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian

Gustaf Dalman

Work and Customs in Palestine

Volume I/1

The Course of the Year and the Course of the Day

First Half: Autumn and Winter

Translated from the German

by

Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian

Originally published in German by C. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh, 1928

Reprinted by Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, Zürich, New York, 1987

English translation based on the 1987 Georg Olms Verlag edition

Translation copyright © Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian 2013

ISBN 9789950385-00-9

Published by: Dar Al Nasher

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Printed in Ramallah, Palestine

Distributed by

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Preface to the English Edition of Volume I/1 and Volume I/2

of

Work and Customs in Palestine

The goal of this English translation of Volume I of Gustaf Dalman’s eight-volume Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina is to make his work accessible to a much wider non-German-speaking public and so broaden interest in his work.

Gustaf Dalman (1855-1941) was a German orientalist and scholar of biblical studies, Jewish law and ancient Hebrew and Aramaic. He was born in Niesky in Saxony, Germany in 1855 and died in nearby Herrenhut in 1941, after having lived for many years in Palestine. In 1902 he established in Jerusalem the Deutsches Evangelisches Institut für Altertumswissenschaft des Heiligen Landes, the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology, which he directed for many years. He was one of the most outstanding, if not the most important European scholar of Palestine, and a most prolific and meticulous writer. He produced a vast body of scholarly work in the fields of Palestinian folklore, the historical geography of Palestine and Jerusalem, Hebrew and Aramaic language and Christian theology.

Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina is his opus magnum. In its eight volumes with over 3,000 pages, nearly 800 illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography, it provides an encyclopedic view of pre-industrial traditional life of the Palestinian people at the turn of the 20th century. In Volume I he describes the course of the year and day in autumn and winter (Volume I, Part One) and in spring and summer (Volume I, Part Two). For each season Volume I covers such topics as plants and animals, weather, agriculture, religious feasts and proverbs. This is followed in later volumes by a presentation of the activities and topics related to agriculture (Volume II), harvesting, threshing, winnowing, sieving, storing and milling (Volume III), the preparation of bread, oil and wine (Volume IV) and textiles, spinning weaving and clothing (Volume V). The description of life in tents, cattle and dairy farming, hunting and fishing (Volume VI) is followed by a description of the house and chicken-, dove- and bee-farming (Volume VII). Volume VIII deals with domestic life, birth, marriage and death, but was left unfinished at his death.

Volume I of Dalman’s Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina was first published in 1928 by the C. Bertelsmann publishing house in Gütersloh, Germany. The remaining volumes appeared between then and 1942. The notes for the eighth volume that Dalman left unfinished at the time of his death, were edited for publication in 2001 by Dr. Julia Männchen, professor and custodian of the Gustaf Dalman Institute in Greifswald, Germany.

Dr. Männchen has also written two studies of Dalman: her 1985 dissertation Gustaf Dalmans Leben und Wirken in der Brüdergemeinde, für die Judenmission und an der Universität Leipzig 1855-1902 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987), and Dalman als Palästinawissenschaftler in Jerusalem und Greifswald: 1902-1941 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993).

All seven volumes of the 1928 edition of Arbeit und Sitte were reprinted by Walter de Gruyter in Berlin in 1968 and again in 1987 by Georg Olms in Hildesheim. This translation uses the Olms 1987 edition.

My first acquaintance with Gustaf Dalman came in 1989, when I attended a lecture by the Palestinian historian, scholar and Jerusalem expert, the late Dr. Kamel Asali, at the Goethe Institute in Amman, with the title “Gustaf Dalman and his Monumental Work on Palestine”. Dr. Asali highlighted the importance of Dalman’s work as a reference for students and scholars of Palestine in general, be they biblical scholars, ethnographers, astrologers, geographers, botanists or linguists. But he also stressed that his work was particularly important for the people of Palestine themselves, since it preserved for them for posterity a valuable treasure of their folklore, recorded and passed on from generation to generation. It was a monumental work, providing an encyclopedic view of pre-industrial life of the Palestinian people at the turn of the 20th century, available only in the original language it was written in, German, just waiting to be translated ....! It was then that I knew I was going to start translating Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina.

Once I started immersing myself in the text I was struck by Dalman’s deep knowledge and minute descriptions of the daily life and traditions of the Arab population of Palestine and by his humanistic attitude that shone through in his writings – an attitude that was free of the religious and racial prejudices often found in other European scholars of Palestine of his time.

The picture that emerged for me was that Palestinian village culture at the turn of the 20th century represents – through the practices, sayings, songs and beliefs of its people – the living heritage of all accumulated past cultures, which the Arab inhabitants of Palestine incorporated and adopted, resulting in a culture that is distinctively their own. As Dalman says in his introduction to Volume I, Part One: “Above all, the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, with justified pride in their uniqueness and their past, should erect a lasting monument to their culture by describing it faithfully and without any attempts to beautify it.”

Dalman’s main aim and starting point was to shed light on the biblical and post-biblical past of Palestine. Instead of only studying texts and relics of the past, and the Bible, he studied the daily activities and customs of the Arab population of Palestine of the present. For this he had studied Arabic and acquainted himself with the Palestinian Arabic dialect. Already at a young age, he had produced a grammar of the Aramaic language and a Hebrew-Aramaic dictionary, among other books. But now he produced books like Jerusalem und seine Gelände (Jerusalem and its Environs) and compiled the Palästinischer Diwan, a collection of folkloric songs, containing their lyrics and melodies). By comparing his findings with practices and descriptions mentioned in the Bible, he was able to deduce what life must have been like at that time.

But the subject of his work became the popular culture of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine as such. Dalman did not only describe their customs and beliefs, but also their environment and everything connected to it. For that purpose he combined anthropology, comparative religion, music, and biblical scholarship with geography, geology, botany, astrology, meteorology and zoology into a “Universalwissenschaft” (universal science). He called this new multi-disciplinary field of study, which he established, “Palästinakunde” (Palestinology). In addition he gave his empirical descriptions their anthropological, mythological and religious backgrounds and explanations. He not only compared the daily practices he studied with those mentioned in the Bible, but also with those mentioned in the works of past centuries and antiquity, written by Greek, Roman, Jewish and Arab authors. He also compared some of their customs with those in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. As Dr. Asali said in his lecture: “Dalman is an independent phenomenon in the world of science.” His scholarship “was unique and not to be repeated”.

In 1920, Dalman established and directed the Institut für Palästinawissenschaft at the University of Greifswald. It was renamed the Gustaf Dalman Institut on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The institute houses his archives, manuscripts and documents, and includes thousands of books as well as tens of thousands of photographs of Palestine, and a large number of other items that he had collected over the years, and had brought back with him to Greifswald. It includes a museum consisting of various original Palestinian agricultural tools, Palestinian traditional dress, a herbarium with over 2,000 items, musical instruments, coins, weights, stones, wooden branches, and glass and metal objects. The Dalman Institute is in the process of digitalizing these items, and a database of the thousands of photographs of Palestine can be viewed at http://greif.uni-greifswald.de/webgate_dalman/. It is worth mentioning that the German Protestant Institute of Archeology in Jerusalem still houses part of Dalman’s collections that he had left there, while the Environmental Education Center in Beit Jala displays Dalman’s bird collection.

For many students and scholars, Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine is invaluable for understanding biblical and post-biblical Palestine, as well as pre-industrial village life in general. For Palestinian readers it is invaluable as a detailed record of their past and present folkloric culture. Furthermore, Work and Customs in Palestine is a description and reminder of a time in Palestine when all the three monotheistic religions lived side by side, in many instances sharing similar customs and sometimes even the same shrines. Dalman’s starting point was to find the past in the present, to think the present into the past. But he also saw and described the similarities between the religious practices of the three faiths in the present, making his work a valuable reference book also for those interested in inter-faith relations.

But what emerges as well is that, at a time when the challenges and threats to the daily life and existence of the Palestinian people on their land are taking on increasingly serious dimensions, when orders to demolish their villages are still being issued to this very day, and churches and mosques vandalized; when the authenticity of their claim to their homeland is being denied on nearly every level, Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine remains a monumental, encyclopedic validation of the identity of the Palestinian inhabitants of Palestine as a people and a validation of their deep roots in Palestine, roots which – without interruption – go all the way back to antiquity, if not to the dawn of history.

About the Translation

The main consideration guiding this translation has been to remain as close as possible to the original text, for the sake of conveying accurately not only the meaning, but also the linguistic style of Dalman’s scholarly work. Dalman can sometimes be lyrical, especially in his descriptions of the Palestinian landscape in different seasons, revealing himself as the photographer and painter he also was. On occasion when the German sentence structure becomes overly convoluted, the translation breaks up sentences to improve the English style.

With regard to Dalman’s own translation of Arab proverbs into German, I follow the German translation, which is not always literal. Only when there is a big difference between an Arabic word and its German counterpart, do I point this out in an occasional footnote.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who have contributed in preparing this English edition. Without their valuable help it would not be in the version it is in now.

My special thanks go to Dr. Robert Schick of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman. He extended great care in meticulously revising my draft translation. He also carefully checked the transliterations and Bible citations, added the Greek words, proofread the text and prepared the indices. His expert knowledge was invaluable in improving the quality of the translation. He also encouraged me to prepare for publication the translations of these two parts of volume I, which I had started some time ago, without waiting until the rest of the volumes had been translated.

I would like to thank Ms. Isabelle Ruben in Amman for bringing a pair of fresh eyes to the translated text and for her help in stylistic editing and proofreading. Her expert knowledge of matters floral and faunal also improved the quality of the translation. Both Dr. Schick and Ms. Ruben, as native English speakers, gave the text the polish it needed.

I would also like to thank Mrs. Clare MacGillivray of Scotland who was the first contributor to this effort. She efficiently transformed my handwritten manuscript into a readable and editable digital version and contributed the first rough editing. Ms. Ana Silkatcheva in Irbid worked on some of the indexes, as well as added the index of place names, which is not in the German original.

I also would like to thank the Gustaf Dalman Institute in Greifswald, Germany, for their encouragement and support, and for making available high resolution scans of most of the original photographs that Dalman had used in Volume I.

My thanks also go to the Dar Al Nasher publishing house for bringing this translation to light.

Lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Ghiath Sukhtian for his constant support and my cousin Fadia Abdulhadi, for her initial and constant encouragement.

Amman, April 2013

Nadia Abdulhadi-Sukhtian

Editorial Notes

The general format of the volumes has been closely followed. The indices, including the topical index, reproduce the original indices, with only a few additions, such as the Latin names of plants added in parentheses after the common names. An index of place names, which the original German edition does not have, has been added.

The English translations of Arabic sayings and verses of poetry follow Dalman’s German translations; more literal translations are occasionally noted in a translator’s footnote.

At the end of Volume I, Part Two, Dalman included several pages of addenda. These have been placed in the text in footnotes marked as addenda. Typographical errors listed in the addenda have been silently corrected in the text.

For verses from the Bible, Dalman’s translations are also followed here, occasionally adopting phraseology from the Revised Standard or Jewish Publication Society English versions. When there is a significant difference between Dalman’s German translation and those versions, the fact is noted in a translator’s footnote.

Dalman cites verses from the Old Testament according to the verse numbering of the Hebrew Masoretic text, which occasionally differs from the verse numbering of modern Christian versions.

Several conventions that Dalman adopted have been kept, such as distinguishing Hebrew and Aramaic names from Arabic ones, by having the Hebrew and Aramaic names capitalized and the Arabic names in lower case and in italics. Arabic place names are transliterated and in italics, other than a handful commonly known by their English versions, e.g. Jerusalem and Hebron.

Transliterations

Dalman’s transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic words are also reproduced here, but with sh for Dalman’s š; q for Dalman’s k; and y for Dalman’s j.

For Arabic words, the standard library of Congress English transliteration system is adopted here, which differs in some cases from the German system that Dalman used:

أ = ’

ب = b

ج = j

ح = ḥ

خ = kh

د = d

ذ = dh

ر = r

ز = z

ص = ṣ

ض = ḍ

ط = ṭ

ظ = ẓ

ع = ‘

غ = gh

ف = f

ق = q

ك = k

ل = l

م = m

ن = n

ه = h

و = w

ي = y

vi

vii

viii

ix

x

xi

xii

xiii

Robert Schick

Preface

I started collecting information for the description of work and customs of Palestine that is begun here in 1899. An invitation by a Scot then in Aleppo, the Rev. W. M. Christie, D.D., and a scholarship from Leipzig enabled me to travel to Palestine, with a seven-month stay in Aleppo from 27 June 1899 to 26 January 1900. So I had rich opportunity to explore the many facets of this northern Syrian city, little touched by the West, in summer as well as in winter, and to form relationships with the bedouin and farmers of the surrounding areas. After having already traveled through Palestine from 17 April to 22 June 1899, I arrived there for a second time on 6 February 1900. From 10 February to 15 March I stayed in Balāṭ, located between southern Lebanon and Mt Hermon, in the hospitable home of the Christian sheikh Fāris Ṣubḥīye. There I fully lived the life of a farmer, getting to know the rural economy. I then traveled with two farmers and their horses southwards through the whole of Palestine as far as Hebron and ‘Ēn Jidi, spending the nights in farmhouses and bedouin tents. We continued east of the Jordan north to Damascus, where I arrived on 10 May.[1] In this way, I laid the groundwork for my by no means complete, but nevertheless wide-ranging knowledge of Palestinian popular life. I especially had the opportunity in Aleppo to learn from Ḥabīb Ṣubḥīye, the son of Fāris Ṣubḥīye, how the customs of Palestine differ from those of northern Syria.

After a reluctant parting from the Orient, which included an instructive stay in Egypt until 2 June 1900, I arrived again in Jaffa on 25 October 1902, in order to set up and direct the German Protestant Institute for the Archaeology of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. From that date until 30 June 1914, I resumed the ethnological work that I had started in 1899, at home and during my yearly travels throughout Palestine. Every hike and every ride was dedicated to that purpose. I took advantage of the overnight stays in tents or farmhouses, rests in bedouin tents, the company of horse grooms from the cities, my peasant travel servants and all sorts of acquaintances. I remember with gratitude the bedouin Ḥmēd from the vicinity of Aleppo who taught me how to weave, the friends from Balāṭ, the teacher Faraḥ Ṭābri in es-Salṭ, then eṭ-Ṭaiyibe, and now in Jerusalem, the knowledgeable Khalīl Mikāīl from Rāmallah, whose conversations on journeys and in his home town clarified many a detail, and my servant ‘Ōde Sālih from Jifna. Above all I have not forgotten the half-bedouin ‘Abd el-Wālī, who was always prepared to share with me the vast treasure of his deep knowledge of popular life. He was actually from Ḥezma but had lived a good part of his life among the bedouin east of the Jordan, hence his familiarity with their customs and expressions. I usually met him in the Fāra Valley, where he cultivated cucumbers and pumpkins on a small piece of leased land. In winter he lived with his two daughters – he was a widower – in a cave, and in summer in a small stone hut. His plan was to build a picturesque recreational area for the people of Jerusalem next to the lower spring adjacent to his land. But war destroyed all of his plans. In March 1916, I was informed of his death. He was a Muslim in the best sense of the word. The fātḥa[2] was on his lips whenever, striding next to my horse, he came to a vantage point. To be sure, he always made his little calculations whenever he appeared with some figs and cucumbers in my house, but he was always willing to help, admitting whenever he did not know something, and always content with a modest reward. His last greetings to me were a qaṣīde that he dictated on 29 April 1914:

yā rākib fōq eṭ-ṭāyir

üdāk el-berq es-sāyir

derbak ‘abḥūr ujezāyir

raiyiḍ minshāni shwoiye.

tab‘ath ma‘ak qaṣīde

khaṭṭ el-qalam bijerīde

dalmān yaktibha fiīdeh

unsauwi byūt er-rasmīye.

sā‘at ma yūṣil iktābi

min faḍlak rudd ej-jawābi

uṭlub minni lā thābi

willi bitrīdeh ‘alaiyi.

qōli beṣalā kin tamm

‘ala ‘īsa ibn meryam

yā qāri lā shuft el-hamm

hādha illi ‘alaiyi.[3]

You, who rides above the flyer,[4]

Like the lightning that rushes along,

Your path goes over seas and islands

Wait for me a while!

So that I will send with you a song,

Written with a pen on paper.[5]

Dalman will write it himself

And we’ll create proper verses.

Then when my piece of writing arrives,

Please send me an answer,

Ask of me without hesitation.

What you want is my duty.

My words end with a prayer

To Jesus, Son of Mary.

O reader, may you not see any suffering.

That is what I desire.

My call hē yā ‘abd el wāli hē! with which I often climbed down to the Fāra springs to seek his company, will not be heard anymore. But the memory of its little river, which since 1926 also is no more,[6] flowing through fragrant mint, and the slopes of its valley glittering in the sun, will always remain indissolubly connected to his person. To him and to all other friends in the farmhouse and bedouin tent, I dedicate this greeting:

lā taḥsibu in ṭālat el-ghēbe nesīnākum

kullamā ṭālat el-ghēbe dhakarnākum

Do not think that because we were absent for so long we forgot you!

You remain on our mind even while we are far away.

After the war, I was able to stay in Palestine another two times, though not in my own home. First, from 5 April until 1 December 1921, and then from 4 March until 8 September 1925. Because of my many duties,[7] the first stay did not yield as much as the second for my study of work and customs. During both visits, as in 1900, I had my most important base in the leprosy asylum near Jerusalem. Its location outside the city between the rocky wilderness and the farmland gave me the opportunity for many an observation, and its inmates were always willing to share with me their life experiences from all parts of Palestine.[8] The well-meant reforms of the English government and Jewish immigration had not yet destroyed the magic and charm of the Orient. How wonderful it was to once again enjoy its hospitality in a village house; sitting on the floor without table and chair, to hold a sickle in the wheat field, a pitchfork on the threshing floor, and to listen to the flute of the shepherd boy in the rocky valley, to study the stones of the country, not only in a collection, but directly there in place, and to pick its purple blossoms from the fields. A Norwegian once praised the power of culture to promote the truth, so little of which was detectable during the war and the post-war period. I, for my part, was happy to have had the opportunity to widen my horizons by learning from the know-how and wisdom of those who could neither read nor write, and to stay in a time that was no less happy, because machines and electricity had not yet given new forms to life.

By merely immersing oneself in the world of the work and customs of Palestine nothing would really be gained that could promote Western scholarship. Reality, not sentiment, has to be comprehended and translated into images and texts. Even then, merely reproducing its form is not enough. It is the nature and development of things, their technique and practice that have to be grasped and made intelligible. This volume and the ones to follow hopefully will show that I have strived to do so. Let others join in the work! Above all, the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, with justified pride in their uniqueness and their past, should erect a lasting monument to their culture by describing it faithfully without any attempts to beautify it, before European influence unravels and destroys it.

Whoever undertakes such a task as a theologian cannot let himself be seduced into concentrating only on those points that at a first and perhaps very superficial glance seem to show biblical connections. How often does a closer look show that the connections point in another direction. It is also not permitted to report in the descriptions only those aspects that contribute to explaining biblical expressions and statements. Real conclusiveness and a correct perception are achieved only when things are studied in their own context. Add to this the fact that the exclusive consideration of biblical comparative material, in which many things appear only by chance, and other things just as much by chance do not appear at all, would mean doing without the much more extensive comparative material that ancient Jewish-Palestinian literature offers. This material can be found examined in almost complete form in a series of monographs,[9] but has not been yet sufficiently compared with forms of customs and work existing in Palestine today, since there is no account that sufficiently takes relevant Arabic expressions into consideration. This gap shall now be filled, by placing the Arabic present in the foreground and excluding what is recognizably the foreign impact of recent times. Here, from the Arab past I have consulted especially the kitāb ‘ajāib el-makhlūqāt[10] of Zakariyā ibn Muḥammad ibn Maḥmūd al-Qazwīni, who, based on his vast knowledge of the Near East, including Syria, wrote his book around 1263.[11] Naturally, I have used with gratitude what has been done in the present especially by Taufik Canaan but also by others for the illumination of Palestinian life, not without always stating what I have taken from such sources.

I have combined the biblical and the Jewish-Palestinian material, as well as archaeological findings, with findings from the Palestinian present, without ever intending to strive for completeness. I do not claim to have pursued in depth material drawn from Greek literature and the religious history of the Near East. Indexes of the biblical passages and of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic expressions, together with a subject index will make the interpretation of the Jewish-Palestinian literature easier, but also the relevant dictionaries, especially the Arabic ones, which all too often still lack precise definitions of technical terms, will certainly benefit from them. Finally, let the same work be done for the living Syriac of the East here and now. Many a detail in the Palestinian literature could thus be more securely understood and determined. Also, the Aramaic dialect of Ma‘lūla, which is geographically closer, in spite of its strong Arabic influence, could make a contribution if meticulously studied from this point of view.

I would have been happier with the results of my work, had I been able to complete it in Palestine and get answers for the questions that arose then and there. But circumstances, which I shall not discuss here, prevented that. Nevertheless, I dare to hope that the realities of Palestinian life can be recognized in this and the following volumes.

The second volume deals with agriculture and the further processing of grain through milling and baking. The complete work is to contain as multi-faceted a discussion of Palestinian life as possible, and thus offer a biblical archaeology that is not, as usually happens, based on the written sources of antiquity, where something Palestinian is brought up only as an example. On the contrary, it begins with present-day Palestine and from there goes back to antiquity.

Among the illustrations included are those that I owe to previous members of the German Protestant Institute, and among them some whose authors are unknown. I hope that this collaboration on an institute publication, which I gratefully acknowledge, belongs to the purposes for which the photographs were passed on to me.

I will add the promised indexes to the second half-volume, which should soon follow.

Greifswald, Palästina-Institut, 1 November 1927

G. Dalman

Abbreviations

PJB Palästinajahrbuch

ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins

MuN des DPV Mitteilungen und Nachrichten des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins

ZDMG Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

ZAW Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

PEFQ Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly.

JPOS Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society.

BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

The page numbers of the Midrash Rabba refer to the Octavo Edition, Vilna 1897.

Table of Contents

Preface ...................................................................................................................................... III

Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... XI

A. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1

I. General ...........................................................................................................................1

The Meaning of the Natural Year ............................................................... 2

II. The Popular Calendar .............................................................................................. 3

Natural and Work Calendars ........................................................................ 6

Calendar of Festivals ....................................................................................... 8

Cycle of the Moon ........................................................................................... 9

New Moon Customs .......................................................................................... 10

Stars ........................................................................................................................ 14

The Week .............................................................................................................. 16

Superstitions about Time ................................................................................ 17

III. The Months....................................................................................................................20

Names of the Months ....................................................................................... 22

Days of the Month ............................................................................................24

IV. The Beginning of the Year.....................................................................................24

New Year Customs ........................................................................................... 26

Oracle .................................................................................................................... 29

Sacrifice ...........................................................................................................٫.... 32

V. The Seasons ................................................................................................................ 35

Two Seasons (Summer and Winter) ........................................................... 35

Their Boundaries ............................................................................................... 40

Influence of the Sun ......................................................................................... 43

Length of the Day ............................................................................................. 44

Four Seasons ....................................................................................................... 46

Six or Seven Seasons .............................................................................٫......... 50

Fifty-Day Periods .........................................................................................٫.... 51

B. The Course of the Year .53

I. Autumn.................................................................................................................................. 53

1. Dead Lower Plant Life................................................................................ 53

Rolling Plants................................................................................. 55

2. Trees, Fields and Cisterns at the Beginning of Autumn................... 58

Cultivated Shade Trees .............................................................. 58Wild Trees ..................................................................................... 66

Vineyards and Fields .................................................................. 71

Water Storage ................................................................................ 72

3. The Forest......................................................................................................... 75

West of the Jordan ....................................................................... 76

East of the Jordan ....................................................................... 81

In Lebanon ..................................................................................... 83

Felling of Trees ............................................................................ 89

4. Temperature and Dew in Autumn........................................................ 91

Shortness of the Days .................................................................91

Temperature ..................................................................................... 92

Dew ................................................................................................... 95

5. Blossoms Before the Rain.......................................................................... 98

Sea Squill ........................................................................................ 98 Autumn Crocuses ......................................................................... 99

6. Autumn Colors and Falling Leaves of Trees..................................100

At the Jordan River ................................................................... 103 Near Jerusalem ........................................................................... 104

7. The East Wind and the Onset of Rain................................................ 105

Appearance of the East Winds .............................................. 105

Their Effects ................................................................................ 107

8. Clouds and Lightning................................................................................ 111

Cloudy Sky .................................................................................. 112

Lightning, Rain Drops ............................................................. 116

9. The Autumn Rain and Its Proper Time ............................................... 117

Premature Rain ........................................................................... 118

Proper Time for Rain .................................................................120

St. George and Quzaḥ .............................................................. 121

Festival of the Booths .............................................................. 123

Early Rain ..................................................................................... 124

Flood ..............................................................................................125

Jewish Rain Dates ..................................................................... 127

Right Amount of Rain .............................................................. 129

Amount of Rain .......................................................................... 129

10. The Temporary Absence of Rain ....................................................... 132

Local Rain .................................................................................... 133

Price of Grain .............................................................................. 134

11. Prayers for Rain .........................................................................................135

Popular Processions and Songs ............................................ 136

The Bringer of Rain .................................................................. 148

Prayers and Sacrifices .............................................................. 150

Festival of the Booths ..............................................................152

Days of Fasting ............................................................................ 156

12. Autumn Storms.......................................................................................... 158

Maritime Traffic ......................................................................... 159

13. Rainless Intervals .................................................................................... 161

Their Advantages and Disadvantages ................................ 162

14. Agriculture in Autumn and Migrating Birds164

Orchards ........................................................................................ 165

Booths and the Festival of the Booths ............................... 166

The Bee-Eater ............................................................................. 168

Pre-Rain Sowing ........................................................................ 169

Starling, Stork, Crane, Quail ................................................. 172

Pasture Economy ....................................................................... 173

Large and Small Livestock .................................................... 175

Cattle Tithe ................................................................................... 175

II. Winter................................................................................................................................ 178

1. Winter Rain..................................................................................................... 178

Short Days .................................................................................... 178

Amount of Rain .......................................................................... 178

December Rain ........................................................................... 184

January and February ............................................................... 187

Borrowed Days ........................................................................... 189

Types of Rain .................................................................................. 194

Water Trickling from Roofs ................................................... 196

Travel in Winter .......................................................................... 198

Sun, Rainbows, Clouds as Signs of the Weather ........... 199

2. Insufficient Winter Rain............................................................................. 202

No Year Without Rain .............................................................. 202

Periods of Drought (the Famine of the Bible) ................ 205

3. Water in Winter............................................................................................ 207

Rain Pools and Rain Streams ................................................ 211

Perennial Water Course ........................................................... 214

Destruction by Torrential Water ........................................... 215

4. Winter Thunderstorms...............................................................................219

Thunder and Lightening ..........................................................219

The Smoking of the Mountains (Sinai) .............................219

5. Winter Cold and Heating..........................................................................226

Winter Temperatures and Frost Days .................................227

Protection against the Cold ....................................................230

Time and Abatement of the Cold .........................................231

Heating and Means of Heating .............................................235

6. Crystallized Precipitation.........................................................................237

Frost and Ice ................................................................................ 238

Snowfall ..........................................................................................239

Hail ..................................................................................................242

Mentions in the Bible ...............................................................244

7. Winds in Winter.......................................................................................... 246

Effect of Wind Directions .......................................................246

Statistics of Wind Directions ................................................249

Wind Stillness ............................................................................. 252

Wind Velocity .............................................................................253

Winds in the Bible .....................................................................254

The Wind System in the Book of Enoch ..........................256

8. Vegetation in Winter.....................................................................................257

The First Flowers ........................................................................257

The Mandrake .............................................................................258

Narcissus Tazetta and Anemonies ....................................... 260

Greening of Trees ...................................................................... 263

White Broom and Almond Blossoms ................................ 263

Evergreen Trees ......................................................................... 265

9. Agriculture in Winter...............................................................................269

Early and Middle Winter Sowing ........................................269

Ploughing of Orchards and Pruning of Vines ................. 269

The New Year of Trees ............................................................269

Egg-Laying by Hens .................................................................269

Cats, Flies, Mosquitoes ........................................................... 269

Cattle and Lambs .......................................................................269

10. Winter Festivals.........................................................................................278

Feast of Barbara ......................................................................... 278

Adonis Gardens ..........................................................................281

Processions ................................................................................... 282

Christmas ......................................................................................283

Jewish Feast of the Dedication of the Temple ................285

Feast of Baptism ........................................................................286

Photographs ......................................................................................................................... 289

[1]SeeZDPV1900, p. 21ff., SaataufHoffnung1900, p. 82ff.

[2] The first sura of the Koran.

[3] The last verse from another song of ‘Abd al-Wāli.

[4] The first airplanes had already been seen before the First World War.

[5] The qaṣīde is said to have been sent to Sven Linder, at the time a Swedish candidate of theology, who had dealings with him in 1912.

[6]ThewaterofthespringwasdivertedtoJerusalem.

[7]SeePJB1921, p. 3ff.

[8]SeeOrient. Literaturzeitung (1926), p. 822ff., ChristentumundWissenschaft (1926), p. 522ff.

[9] Still missing, among others, are cattle-breading, dairy-farming, city and village, most handicrafts, trade, fruit-trees, aside from olive trees, fig trees and vines. Here there are still good assignments for useful work.

[10] The edition of F. Wüstenfeld (Göttingen, 1849), which I continually cite (translation by H. Ethé (Leipzig, 1868)). The kitāb al-felāḥa from Spain by Ibn ‘Awām proved less fruitful, since a Greek origin is continually suspected to be behind his information and often can be proved.

[11] According to Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur I, p. 481f., he was born in 1203 and died in 1283.

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

A. Introduction

I. General

In present-day Palestine, the course of the natural year is more important than the Muslim or Christian calendar in official use. The farmer and the bedouin are dependent on it, but the Arab city dweller – unlike us – is also connected to the seasons. Popular life proceeds under the conditions created by the natural year, and it will have been no different in the past.

Similarly, biblical history in its written monuments does not know of the chronology of a fixed calendar and only seldom attempts to make certain spans of time intelligible by counting the years. A closer investigation makes it clear that these years, when not measured according to the lifespan or reign of individuals, are understood as natural years, from which the calendar year emerged gradually. The natural year is determined in all parts of the globe by its position to the sun. But the sun’s effects are not the same in the different parts of the globe; thus, it is a given that every part of the globe has its own natural year. Next to the relation to the sun, the environment and the nature of the land also determine the character of the natural year. It is different on the coast and in the interior, in a landscape of limestone and in a landscape of primordial rock formations. We all know that the perceptions, mentality and actions of human beings are in many ways continually determined by the natural year. Advancing culture has always tried to minimize or completely remove by artificial means all sorts of obstacles that nature has prepared. Clothes, housing, means of transport, production and conservation of food all serve such purposes. Solomon’s table was once praised as never having been without stock beet, a winter vegetable, in summer, nor cucumber, a summer vegetable, in winter.[1] Another tradition substituted the stock beet with bitterherb, which also belongs in spring, and the cucumber with summer melon.[2] This led to the assumption that Solomon’s court replaced the products that were lacking in certain seasons of the year in his own country from regions with a different natural year. Today, back home, the same result is achieved to a much greater extent by using hot beds and greenhouses and importing foreign products. But in a less developed culture, man is more dependent on the natural year. From that arises its greater impact on the lives of more primitive peoples. Along with their dwelling places, it forms a significant factor of their history. It is not only the course of history of the peoples in their regular yearly work, their migrations and military campaigns that are determined by the course of their natural year. The ceremonial high points of life, which for us are determined through the spiritual history of mankind as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, are connected to the natural course of the year. Also the spiritual products, the secular and religious creations, reveal in their imagery a close connection to it. We even have to assume that the natural year thereby found its way into religious perceptions and thinking so that in its regular and irregular events, man continually experienced God controlling nature. Certain peoples had a god of fertility and a god of thunderstorms. It was significant that in the land of sacred history, such a belief was confronted by another that subordinated all appearances of the course of the year under a single power. We are not going to ask here how this faith came into being. But it is clear that it constantly had to assert itself against the all-powerful course of nature.[3] The contrasts that are unusually sharp in Palestine between sun and rain, storm and calm, desert land and valleys with springs, weathered mountain cliffs and arable land continually gave cause for that, and indeed to a degree that neither Northerners nor the inhabitants of the Tropics experience in the same way. Behind the creed of an almighty god lies, without a doubt, a history in which this god engaged in a mighty struggle with the powers of nature. It will be useful to place oneself on the primitive ground of the country of the history of this creed, and visualize the nature of the course of the seasons with all its implications. The Bible as Scripture, and the history that produced it, will become more concrete and understandable if one realizes what energy of life lies behind its narratives, prophesies and poetic works. The information in the following chapters should be read with this in mind.

II. The Popular Calendar

The traditions and customs in Palestine must be examined in connection with the climate and nature of the country, and are best seen in relation to popular understanding when one follows the manifestations of their yearly cycles. From this arises the necessity to pay attention also to the calendar by which the Palestinians today arrange the year’s experiences. However, a calendar in our sense of the word, is not the main point here. The Palestinians remain far from consulting such a calendar on a day-to-day basis. Printed calendars, like the ones the Greeks published in Greece recently, are rarely utilized and most cannot read them. Nature itself is today, just as in antiquity, still the great calendar by which everything is regulated. From it derives the popular saying: ed-dinya mā bitkhabbīsh awānha, “Nature does not store its time”, but lets it take place in regular cycles. And so it has always been since the beginning of history, essentially without changing. However, Huntington[4] asserts that ‏great climatic changes have taken place in Palestine since Roman times. But he did not take into consideration the impact of political conditions and the changes of trade routes and reached illogical conclusions based on incidental observations of climatic conditions. The Jews once often stressed that nature and climate in Palestine were ideal before the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the exile of Israel. Others have thought, even today, that “the land of milk and honey” must have appeared completely different from today’s Palestine.[5] More plentiful rainfall, and consequently better cultivation and forestation, were once inherent to it. Divine punishment and the “Turkish economy” changed everything only after the Jews rejected Jesus. The Biblical expressions (Ex 3:8 and passim), hyperbolic in the Oriental fashion, which seem to imply streams of milk and honey, in reality imply a wealth of wild vegetation that would have provided the milk-giving animals and the honey-giving bees[6] all their needs in abundance. They thereby separate this land from deserts with poor vegetation and from lands in which only artificial irrigation enables the growth of vegetation, that is landscapes that lack rain, while Palestine has its regular rainfall.[7] This, however, does not rule out that there can also be times of want there, not to mention the fact that there is a regular period when plants are dormant.

As a consequence, it is clear that the changing destiny of Palestine has undergone many transformations, not just since the beginning of our era, but before and after it too. Periods of desolation have alternated with periods of reconstruction right up until recent times in which the World War also destroyed much here, and built very little. What always remained constant was the nature and climate of the country. They are necessarily so closely connected with the elements that the country consists of, the formation in which it lies, its location on a certain point on the globe, and its borders of the sea and desert, that without a change in these given conditions, no fundamental change in the conditions of Palestine is conceivable.[8] The reports of rainfall and irrigation of the country in the Bible and in post-biblical Jewish literature, which will be discussed later, are in total agreement with that. There are no reliable traces of substantially better and more extensive cultivation than today,[9] unless, possibly, one adds that in western Samaria one can occasionally see that there were once vineyards where there are now forests. The natural layering of the rocks and stones in the hill country led to terracing. But not every such trace of layering can be seen as proof that in ancient times terrace walls once stood there.[10] Then just as much as today, whether they existed or not depended on the diligence of the inhabitants and on the destructive power of winter rainfalls. Nobody has yet been able to take seriously the fantastic descriptions contained in rabbinical literature, citing places and witnesses,[11] of streams actually flowing ankle-deep in milk and honey in the period after Christ, nor such statements as that at the time of Adam’s grandchild, the mountains turned into boulders (ṭerāshīm), in other words they were eroding,[12] which incidentally shows that the inhabitants had noticed the barren rockiness of Palestine as far back as the second century.

The natural calendar of the Palestinian year, according to which everyone arranges everything, does not consist of four, but rather of two seasons;[13] the winter rainy season, simply called esh-shita, “the rain”, and the summer dry season, eṣ-ṣēf, “the summer”. (For more details see Section V below). Above all, for the farmer there also exists another calendar alongside the large-scale natural one, i.e. a calendar based on the work cycle; in the rainy season come “the olives” (ez-zētūn), i.e. their gathering and processing, and the winter tilling of the land (el-ḥarāth); in summer first the harvest (ḥaṣād) and threshing (drās), then ‘the grapes’ (el-‘eneb), i.e. their gathering and processing.[14] The natural calendar and the work calendar already appear in a very abbreviated form in Gen 8:22, where sowing and harvest, frost and heat, and summer and winter are a three-fold description of the same thing, under the assumption that the harvest also includes all the work connected to it, just as sowing does plowing. The work sequence: threshing, vintage, sowing (Lev 26:5), to which harvesting has to be added, and the sequence of plowing, harvesting, grape pressing, sowing (Amos 9:13); or the time of sowing, plowing, harvesting, threshing and winnowing, according to Midrash Tannaim to Deut 11:14 (p. 35);[15] or the barley harvest, wheat harvest and fruit and olive picking which, according to Jebamoth 14d, fill the year, are simply a more exact elaboration of the work calendar.

An especially detailed elaboration, also in the form of a calendar, appears in the agriculture calendar from the time of the Israelite kings that was excavated in Gezer.[16] There, a sequence comprising twelve months is found:

āsīph (bringing in the harvest), two months (September, October),

zera‘ (sowing), two months (November, December),

lāqīsh (late sowing), two months (January, February),

‘aṣīd pishtā (flax cutting), one month (March),

qeṣīr se‘ōrā (barley harvest), one month (April),

qeṣīrīn kullām (all other harvests), one month (May),

zāmīr (vine pruning), two months (June, July),[17]

qayiṣ (fruit picking), one month (August).

To this may be added what Macalister[18] reported about the work cycle in AbuShūshe, which corresponds to that of ancient Gezer.

September, October: rest period, if not work with olives.

November: sowing of kursenne and plowing for wheat.

December: sowing[19] of wheat and plowing for barley.

January: sowing[1] of barley.

February, March: plowing for summer crops.

April: barley harvest.

May: wheat harvest.

June: sowing[1] of summer crops (sorghum and

sesame).

July, August: harvest of summer crops.

It is noteworthy that nothing is said about flax, vines and fruit. This is because AbuShūshe has only a few orchards and the cultivation of flax has completely disappeared from Palestine.

The Old Testament especially uses the harvest as an indication of time, thus Josh 3:15, the harvest in general; 2 Sam 21:9; Ruth 1:22, the barley harvest; Gen 30:14; Judg 15:1; and 1 Sam 12:17, the wheat harvest one month later.

Among the Christians of Palestine, feasts serve as measures of time, particularly when the emphasis falls on certain dates of agricultural importance. They are: the Easter fast (Lent) (eṣ-ṣiām); “the Great Feast” (el-‘īd el-kebīr), with which it ends, i.e. Easter, often only called “the Feast” (el-‘īd); then Pentecost (el-‘anṣara); in northern Palestine, the Feast of Elijah (‘īd mār elyās) on 20 July; the Feast of the Cross (‘īd eṣ-ṣalīb) on 14 September; the Feast of St. George of Lydda (‘īd lidd) on 3 November; Christmas (‘īd el-mīlād) on 25 December; and finally the Feast of the Epiphany (‘īd el-ighṭās) on 6 January; while the New Year is rarely observed.[20] All these dates are according to the Greek calendar, which lags behind our calendar by thirteen days and which, for Easter, is based on a completely different determination. It has been established that approximately fifty-day periods lie between these holidays. In el-Iqbēbe, these were counted from the Feast of the Cross to the Feast of St. George, and from then to the Feast of the Epiphany, although the latter period actually comprises sixty-four days. The Feast of the Epiphany should have been replaced by Christmas, as happens in the “seven fifties” (es-sab‘ khamsīnāt), which Canaan reports for southern Palestine.[21] Lent, Easter, Pentecost, vineyard huts, wine presses (el-ma‘ṣera), the Feast of St. George and Christmas are differentiated that way. But the Feast of Elijah and the Feast of the Cross should have replaced the grape storing and the grape pressing, especially since the preparation of dibs, let alone wine, plays no role among the peasants in many areas of Palestine, and for el-ma‘ṣera one would usually think of the olive press.

The Muslims, whose official calendar of lunar months is independent of the solar year and so is not relevant to the activity of the farmers and bedouin have, since time immemorial, also used the Christian feasts as markers of time. Muqaddasi[22] mentions that the Muslims used Christmas and New Year (as the beginning of the cold), Easter and Pentecost (as the beginning of the heat), the Feast of the Cross (as the time for the grape harvest), the Feast of Lydda (as the start of sowing) and the Feast of Barbara (as the start of the winter rains).

The work and natural calendar of the Palestinians is, by its nature, dependent on the solar year and does not take the course of the moon into account. This corresponds with the Jewish view that “nations” count according to the sun, whereas the Israelites count according to the moon,[23] insofar as the latter connect the months with the course of the moon, while the former arrange them according to the course of the sun. Jewish belief is presupposed in Ps 104:19 that “He made the moon to mark the seasons” and in Sirach 43:7 “From the moon comes the sign for festal days.” Nonetheless, in Palestine, the moon with its magical bright light does not go unnoticed by non-Jews as well. The owner of flocks wishes, out of practical considerations, for qamra urabī, “moonlight and green fodder”,[24] since the light from the moon makes tending the flock at night easier. But it is the new moon (hilāl), the emblem of Turkey and of the Muslims, which is wrongly called a half-moon, that is especially important. After dark nights whenever it becomes visible in the western sky, with its bright and nearly completely closed garland, one does not fail to greet it. One says: hall hlāl u‘özz jelāleh, rētak ‘alēna shahr mebārak!, “The new moon of God has appeared, oh the majesty and power of God, may you be a blessed month for us!” One also says: rētak min leyāli es-se‘ūd – ukill shahr ‘alēna te‘ūd, “May you bring us happy nights and return to us every month!” (‘Abd el-Wāli). In Elji the saying is: allāh ehlāl mnehlālak – tkaffalna ṭawāyiḥ zemānak, “Oh God, a new moon from your new moons – vouch for the occurrences of your time!” These sayings, which bring to mind the lunar months of Islam, betray the influence of the official religion. The stress is always on ‎God as the Creator. But, there are also sayings without such allusions, which are probably older. One says: hall ehlāl uejlāleh, rētak helāl mbārak ‘alēna, “The new moon and its luster appeared, may you be a blessed new moon to us!”[25] The new moon itself with its new light is the power that brings luck. You kiss your thumbs when you see it, and glide them over your eyes so that they will stay healthy (‘Abd el-Wāli). It is useful to let the moon’s glow fall on a piece of gold or silver, but never on copper. In order for envy not to destroy one’s hoped-for happiness, one takes a little stick in one’s hand, breaks it in the middle, and says: kasarna[26] ‘ūd – fi ‘ēn el-ḥasūd, “We are breaking a piece of wood – into the eye of the envious!” It would be a bad omen if at that moment one catches sight of a gloomy face, but a good one if one were in good spirits. For that reason one does well to cover one’s eyes when one would otherwise see an unfriendly face, and uncover them when a friendly face comes into view.[27]

A similar custom is presumed in Job 31:26f. where, in connection with viewing the sun and moon, the hand is placed on the mouth for a kiss. A domestic new moon celebration with a feast is presumed in 1 Sam 20:5; a religious celebration in 2 Kings 4:23; Hos 5:7; Amos 8:5 and Is 1:13; and a legally regulated one for the sanctuary in Ezek 46:1-6f. and Num 28:11ff.[28] But the word hillūlīm in Judg 9:27 does not prove that the new moon was greeted with ululations, because the word was not used for the new moon celebrations. Sirach (43:8) speaks with obvious delight of the new moon, marvelous in its recurrence and which, like a beacon to the hosts on high, shines in the vault of the heavens. Popular customs concerning Jewish Palestine at a later time are also attested. Yehuda urged, in the second century, that the new moon be greeted with the blessing: “Praise to you Yhvh, who renews the months!”[29] This blessing is called for until the 7th or the 14th of the month, that is, until the full moon, and it is advisable to perform it standing up. It is good to perform it at the end of the Sabbath, when people should be perfumed and well dressed, pointing their feet and directing their eyes toward the moon. They jump three times and say: “A good omen, a good omen may it be for the whole of Israel! Just as I am jumping towards you, without reaching you, so may those who are jumping towards me never reach me!”[30] The official religion thinks only about the divine order of the lunar months (Sirach 43:6-8; cf. Gen 1:14 with Tg Jer I.; Ps 104:19); but the omen of looking at the new moon has obviously kept its significance along-side it.

In later times, the judicial determination of the beginning of the month was done by asking witnesses about their actually seeing the new moon; this was an important matter for the Pharisees that naturally led to the special observation of the new moon.[31] The Sadducees wanted to substitute the observation of the moon with a permanently valid system. That is why they tried to create confusion in the “moon court” by using false witnesses. One such witness recounted, “I arrived at the Adummim ascent (on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem). There I saw the new moon hanging between two rocks; its head resembled a calf, its ears a goat, and when I saw it I was startled and shrunk back.” But he added, “And behold, two hundred gold pieces were wrapped in my purse,” whereupon he received the answer, “You should receive the same amount as a gift (for your truthfulness), and may those who sent you[32] come here and receive their punishment.”[33] The new moon witnesses received a meal,[34] but the authorities also had a banquet at the end of the new moon day.[35] This ancient Israelite custom was preserved in this way, although it did not exist in Palestine outside Jewish circles, unless one includes the New Year’s meal (see below).

The Ẓullām bedouin emphasize that the moon can lead astray with the saying: eqmerr itghawa “The moon shone on him and he got lost.”[36] ‘Abd el-Wāli, however, says that the proverb aqmarin ‘ēneh has nothing to do with the moon, but means “his eye was blinded, it became dark in front of his eye.” Today, the farmer pays little attention to the waxing and waning of the moon, although planting during the time of the full moon is considered beneficial,[37] and Qazwīni (1263)[38] stresses that even the uneducated among the farmers know how advantageous it is to plant during a waxing moon. Conversely, in Sidon it is reported[39] that one successfully grafts, plants and sows on all days of the lunar month, so long as one pays attention to the distinction that those plants whose fruits one enjoys are handled on the “full” days (1-6, 11-15, 19-22, 25-27, 29), and the rest on the “empty” days. Qazwīni also mentions that sleeping in the moonlight makes one flabby, and causes colds and headaches,[40] thus contributing to the explanation of the evil influence[41] of the moon (Ps 121:6), whereby the Targum thinks of the demons that are powerful during the night, while David Kimchi more appropriately speaks of the coldness of the moon as opposed to the heat of the sun. Musil[42] describes the destructive light of the stars, against which one protects oneself by washing in salt water, or by covering up. In Sidon, it is believed that uncovering one’s head in the moonlight is risky, since one would become scabby.[43]

The full moon (bedr), with its light almost as bright as day, is considered a friendly element, after which one can name a son. Wijhak bedr, “Your face is like a full moon”[44] is a compliment. But it is also known that one cannot derive any use from the moon. One says: int mithl il-qamar bitwannis umā btinfa’ – “You resemble the moon, you entertain but are of no use”,[45] or one says directly about the moon: el-qamar biwannis umā yeḥmīsh – “The moon might shine without worry, but it does not protect” (Khalīl from Rāmallāh).

There is a series of stars that is of practical significance for calculating time and for the economy, as we shall show in more detail later.[46] The Pleiades (eth-thuraiya), and Sirius (suhēl) are the most important in this respect, followed by Gemini (ej-jōza) and α, β Capricorn (sa‘d edh-dhābiḥ). Astrology contributed to the observation of the stars in antiquity, and still does today.[47] But there are only a few people who have more detailed knowledge about the subject, although some of this knowledge determines popular customs. The bedouin, who pay more attention to the stars and their constellations than do the farmers, refrain from cohabitation during the month of kānūn, because el-belda reigns – i.e., the starless area of Sagittarius[48] that rises on 7 January.[49] It is a sign for bad sons. On the other hand, el-qalb, a bright star in Scorpio, is a sign for good children (‘Abd el-Wāli).[50]

Also in the Old Testament the reason that some constellations are mentioned is undoubtedly because they were of practical significance for determining time (cf. Gen 1:14ff.), although it is not said what this consisted of specifically.In Job 9:9, 38:31f. (cf. with Amos 5:8) ‘āsh (‘ayish), kesīl and kīmā (after Sa‘adiah benāt na‘sh “great bear”, suhēl “Sirius” and eth-thuraiya “Pleiades”) are mentioned in a wider context that deals with precipitation, and thereby makes it probable that the constellations had something to do with its occurrence, as will be shown later. Moreover, in Is 14:12 there is hēlēl, which the LXX and Targum understand as the morning star (in Arabic, from ez-zuhara or nijmet eṣ-ṣubḥ), that was well-known to the Jews as kōkhabtā, in Hebrew, hak-kōkhébet,[51] but which they later knew as nōgah, “brightness”.[52] The veneration that, according to Jer 7:18, 44:19, is meant for the Queen of Heaven, is determined not by offering cakes, but by eastward-pointing openings that indicate the time when Venus is to be venerated as the morning star.[53] This, however, is probably only a scholarly presumption; no equivalent custom is known from later times, although the morning star is generally still noticed today in Palestine, and is significant because it announces the nearness of the day. 2 Kings 23:5 and the present text of Job 38:32 (mazzārōt) probably speak of the constellations of the Zodiac (mazzālōt). That they are twelve is confirmed later,[54] (cf. the twelve gates and the twelve taxiarchesof Enoch 72:3, 82:11), which are enumerated one by one.[55] The Midrash made the mazzārōt of Job 38:32 into a constellation (mazzāl), which “spins” the fruits (memazzēr).[56] The mezārīm of Job 37:9, from where the cold comes, brings to mind the north wind,[57] or a unique window in the middle of the sky through which the sun moves only once in twenty-eight years.[58] It is not improbable that the word mezārīm, together with the mazzārōt of Job 38:32, must be derived from mazrīm, which could be a constellation producing rain (zérem) and cold, perhaps the Hyades.[59] Thus, we would have the name of a constellation that otherwise has not been handed down. The Hyades are suitable, since their setting signals the time for plowing,[60] thus rain, and given that they correspond with ed-dabarān, which according to Qazwīni[61]