Arabic Lunar Mansions (月站二十八宿)

Manāzil al-Qamar — The 28 Stations of the Moon

Overview

The Manāzil al-Qamar (منازل القمر, 'the stations of the Moon') are the Arabic 28 lunar mansions — the third of the world's three great lunar-mansion traditions, alongside the Chinese 二十八宿 and the Indian 27 nakṣatra. As the Moon circles the sky in roughly 28 days, it 'lodges' each night in a different mansion: a named group of stars marking that night's station. This endpoint places the Moon in its mansion for any moment, names the station (al-Sharaṭayn, al-Thurayyā/the Pleiades, al-Qalb/the Heart of the Scorpion, Saʿd al-Suʿūd/the Luckiest of the Lucky…), and gives its star, its meaning, and its traditional electional character. It is the catalogue's first piece of Islamic astronomy — the Islamic tradition here is otherwise geomancy.

Origin & history

The manāzil began as the anwāʾ — the pre-Islamic Bedouin star-calendar of the Arabian Peninsula, in which the heliacal risings and settings of 28 asterisms tracked the seasons, the rains and the pasture. This oral science was codified in the ninth century by Ibn Qutayba in his Kitāb al-Anwāʾ and described with astronomical rigour by al-Bīrūnī. Because each mansion is literally a group of fixed stars — mansion 1, al-Sharaṭayn, is the two horns of Aries (β and γ Arietis) — the system is sidereal by nature, anchored to the stars rather than to the moving equinox. The same star-frame underlies the Indian nakṣatras, which share the identical anchor at the Aries stars but keep 27 equal divisions instead of 28.

As the mansions passed from folk-astronomy into astrology, two things happened. First, they were regularised into 28 equal arcs of 12°51′ each, so the Moon's mansion could be computed rather than observed. Second, they entered the medieval Latin world through the Picatrix and Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy (II.46), where the '28 Mansions of the Moon' became the backbone of talismanic magic — each mansion good for certain works (journeys, marriage, planting, healing, freeing captives) and ill for others. Crucially, the Latin tradition reckoned the mansions from 0° tropical Aries, while the authentic Arabic anwāʾ layer is sidereal; the two frames diverge by about two mansions. This endpoint keeps the sidereal reading as primary and reports the tropical/Agrippa mansion alongside it.

How it works

Give a date, and optionally a time and UTC offset. The engine computes the Moon's true ecliptic longitude from the shared Meeus ephemeris, subtracts the Lahiri ayanamsa to obtain the sidereal longitude, and divides by 360/28 = 12.857° to find the mansion (1–28) — the authentic, star-anchored Arabic reading. It also computes the tropical (Agrippa/Picatrix) mansion from the un-shifted longitude, and reports the divergence between them (usually two mansions). Each mansion returns its transliterated name, Arabic script, anchoring star, literal meaning, whether it is one of the four named Saʿd 'lucky' stations (mansions 22–25), and the Agrippa electional one-liner — clearly flagged as the later European-talismanic layer, not classical Islamic astronomy. Because the Moon crosses a mansion boundary roughly every 22 hours, adding a birth time sharpens the result near a cusp.

Good for

Use cases

Your Birth Mansion

Send a birth date (and time) to find the manzil the Moon lodged in — its name, star, meaning, and whether it is a fortunate Saʿd station.

Sidereal vs Tropical

See the authentic Arabic (sidereal, star-anchored) mansion as primary, and the European talismanic (tropical/Agrippa) mansion alongside — with the ~2-mansion divergence made explicit.

The Electional Layer

Each mansion carries the classical Agrippa 'good for / bad for' one-liner (its Latinized name and traditional acts), disclosed as the later European talismanic tradition.

The Third Lunar Zodiac

Read the Arabic manāzil next to the Chinese 二十八宿 and the Vedic nakṣatra — three cultures dividing the Moon's path, anchored to the same Aries stars.

Key terms

Manzil / Manāzil (منزل / منازل)
A 'lodging' or station of the Moon — one of the 28 star-groups the Moon rests in on successive nights; the plural names the whole system.
Anwāʾ (الأنواء)
The pre-Islamic Arabian star-calendar of heliacal risings and settings, codified by Ibn Qutayba — the authentic, sidereal root of the manāzil.
Sidereal frame
The star-anchored zodiac (the Moon's longitude minus the ayanamsa) that the manāzil truly use — as opposed to the tropical frame of the later European talismanic tradition.
Saʿd (سعد)
'Good fortune' — the epithet of the four named lucky stations, mansions 22–25, clustered in Capricorn and Aquarius.
Election (Agrippa/Picatrix)
The medieval Latin talismanic layer assigning each mansion acts it favours or hinders — a European reception of the mansions, distinct from Islamic astronomy.

API

The askTIAN Arabic Lunar Mansions endpoint places the Moon in one of the 28 manāzil for any moment. It computes the Moon's true longitude on the shared Meeus ephemeris, applies the Lahiri ayanamsa for the authentic SIDEREAL (star-anchored) reading, and returns the mansion's name, Arabic script, anchoring star, meaning, Saʿd 'lucky' flag, and the classical Agrippa electional one-liner — with the TROPICAL (Agrippa/Picatrix) mansion reported alongside and the ~2-mansion divergence disclosed. The arithmetic is gold-locked against Meeus Example 47.a (1992 Apr 12.0 → sidereal mansion 9 al-Ṭarf / tropical 11 al-Zubrah). A best-effort LLM reading is returned in parsable sections (set interpretation:false for structured data only). Honest rails: the mansion boundaries and star anchoring are exact, but the talismanic election notes are the later European layer, not classical Islamic astronomy; symbolic, and not medical, legal or financial advice.

Endpoint: POST /trpc/manazil.calculate — 2 TIAN Points. See the API documentation and Playground.