Naked-Eye Star View — Suhail, ath-Thurayyā & the Mansions of the Moon
The two stars the Arabs watched above all others — Suhail (Canopus) and ath-Thurayyā (the Pleiades) — computed for your sky, with the lunar mansion (manzilah) the moon now occupies. Observation of Allah's signs, never divination by them.
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The moon's 28 mansions, Suhail and ath-Thurayya, and how the Prophet ﷺ corrected star-superstition — an A5 guide.
- The moon's mansions in the Qur'an
- Suhail and ath-Thurayyā
- The pre-Islamic anwāʾ, corrected
- Observation as worship, not divination
The moon's mansions in the Qur'ān
وَٱلْقَمَرَ قَدَّرْنَـٰهُ مَنَازِلَ حَتَّىٰ عَادَ كَٱلْعُرْجُونِ ٱلْقَدِيمِ
"And the moon — We have determined for it mansions (manāzil), until it returns like the old dried date-stalk."
Qur'ān 36:39
Night after night the moon steps eastward through 28 stations of the sky — the manāzil al-qamar — waxing from the thin crescent to the full, then shrinking back until it hangs low and curved like a withered palm-stalk. The Qur'ān names this very reckoning as a purpose of the moon's creation: "and He determined it in mansions, that you may know the number of years and the reckoning" (Qur'ān 10:5). The tool below tells you which mansion the moon occupies at the chosen moment, and when the two great naked-eye markers of the Arab sky rise and set for your location.
Your sky
The two stars of the Arabs
Suhail (Canopus) is the second-brightest star in the entire night sky, yet many northern readers have never seen it: it keeps to the far-southern sky and never rises at all north of about 37°N. In Arabia it does rise — and its first dawn appearance of the year (its heliacal rising, in August — early August in the far south of Arabia, toward the end of the month further north) was the desert Arabs' great season-marker: "when Suhail rises" meant the breaking of the summer heat and the turn toward the cool season. Ath-Thurayyā (the Pleiades) is the compact little cluster the Arabs called simply an-najm, "the Star": its risings and settings divided their year, and counting its faint members with the unaided eye was the classical test of keen sight.
Many reports about the rising of Suhail and of ath-Thurayyā circulate in books and online. In keeping with our sourcing policy, we cite on this page only what we have verified: the Qur'ānic verses above, and the ṣaḥīḥ hadith below on what may — and may not — be said of the stars.
Astronomy (ʿilm al-falak), not astrology (tanjīm)
The pre-Islamic Arabs attributed rain and fortune to the risings and settings of these very mansion-stars — the anwāʾ. Revelation corrected this decisively. After a night of rain at al-Ḥudaybiyah, the Prophet ﷺ related from his Lord:
أَصْبَحَ مِنْ عِبَادِي مُؤْمِنٌ بِي وَكَافِرٌ، فَأَمَّا مَنْ قَالَ: مُطِرْنَا بِفَضْلِ اللَّهِ وَرَحْمَتِهِ، فَذَلِكَ مُؤْمِنٌ بِي كَافِرٌ بِالْكَوْكَبِ، وَأَمَّا مَنْ قَالَ: مُطِرْنَا بِنَوْءِ كَذَا وَكَذَا، فَذَلِكَ كَافِرٌ بِي مُؤْمِنٌ بِالْكَوْكَبِ
"In this morning some of my slaves remained as true believers and some became non-believers; whoever said that the rain was due to the Blessings and the Mercy of Allah had belief in Me and he disbelieves in the stars, and whoever said that it rained because of a particular star had no belief in Me but believes in that star"
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 846 · Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 71Ṣaḥīḥ
Eclipses & Ṣalāt al-Kusūf
Upcoming eclipses, and the Sunnah of the eclipse prayer — worship, not superstition.
🗓️Islamic Calendar
The Hijri months, moon phases, and the crescent-visibility tool.
🧭Qibla Finder
The direction to Mecca — and the sun-over-the-Kaʿbah check.
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