Le Kitāb al-anwāʼ de Abū Hanīfa al-Dīnawarī / Abū Hanīfa al-Dīnawarīʼ Kitāb al-anwāʼ

Presented by:

Professor : Abdelkader Sellami

Arab department of language

University of Tlemcen – Algeria

The Arabs knew, formerly, the orientation thanks to the indicating traces in the sand and the assistance of stars and the stars. They were fine experts of their environment and all that the human géni produced. It is enough, in order to realize it, to see the attention which they paid to the cycles of the months and the change of the seasons. The aptitudes which the Arabs developed were borrowed, but completely original and were not conceived in conformity with their specific living conditions. Indeed, the bases of their knowledge emanated, altogether, of what occurred in their extremely hostile environment; the climate changes, the sites/displacements of the stars and the draughts all were of the instructive indices for them, of the moment when they conceived them like harbingers, according to a prescience cultivated and accumulated since generations thanks to the ancestral experiment of the aïeux one. This know-how was thus for them a base of knowledge, but not only; it allowed them, moreover, one perfect adaptation with all the circumstances, unpleasant were. It was enough to a thunder, a heat wave or a cold so that they did in application what nature had taught them.

Al-Jāḥiẓ clarified this secular ability (death into 255/h) in his Kitāb al-Hayawān.

Since el anwa’ is, for ends of orientation, indices impossible to circumvent among Arabs, it is fundamental to raise the following questions: what does one understand by anwā’? which is the place which this concept in the old Arab researchers occupies? and which employment holds him it Abū Hanīfa al-Dīnawarī? 

* Anwā’ est le pluriel de naw’ qui signifie l’astre quand il tend vers le coucher.