US-Africa Planning Visit: Collaborations in Cultural Astronomy

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Holbrook 0438245This award supports planning activities to develop an international collaboration that investigates the linkages between Islamic astronomy and West African indigenous astronomy. Because Islamic astronomy preserved and improved ancient astronomy and has a clear history of diffusion into Europe during the Middle Ages, it is recognized as having contributed to advances in astronomy during the European Renaissance. Muslim traders began working in West Africa by the tenth century, settled into communities as the merchant class, and came into contact with indigenous culture and beliefs. The U.S. researchers (Drs. Holbrook and Brown) will collaborate with Dr. Urama Johnson of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Dr. Thebe Medupe from the South African Astronomical Observatory and North West University, South Africa, to study indigenous African astronomy in search of evidence of adoptions from Islamic astronomy. The team will examine studies of West African cultures and their cultural astronomy and will develop a lexicon of items from Islamic astronomy to search for within West African cultural astronomy. They will identify Arabic words among indigenous astronomy terms and identify uniquely Islamic astronomy concepts that may have diffused to the local population. The lexicon is expected to be different from that used for Europe because most West African cultures did not use formal writing systems unless they adopted Arabic script. The preliminary study will target the Hausa of Nigeria, who have adopted part of the Islamic calendar, and scientific documents written in Arabic that have been found in Mali. This planning visit is intended to strengthen international collaborations between U.S. and African researchers. The project team is gender diverse, and includes both African and African American researchers, as well as junior faculty. The team plans to include university students from Africa and North America in their research efforts. The collaborators will incorporate their research results into lessons for physics, astronomy, and social science classes and for K-12 outreach groups. The findings of the planned project will be published both in academic journals as well as in popular magazines geared toward advancing the understanding of science. This award is cofunded by the Office of International Science and Engineering and the Science and Technology Studies Program in the Division of Social and Economic Sciences.