Endnote 22
Part I, §19, l. 7. cenith, as here used, has
a totally different meaning from that of senith, in l. 1 above.
The senith in l. 1 is what we still call the zenith; but
the cenith in l. 7 means the point of the horizon denoting the sun's
place in azimuth. Contrary to what one might expect, the latter
is the true original meaning, as the word zenith is corrupted from
the root of the word which we now spell azimuth. The Arabic
as-sant is a way or path; al-samt, a point of the horizon,
and, secondly, an azimuthal circle. The plural of al-samt
is assumut, whence azimuth. But zenith is a
corruption of semt, from samt al-ras, the Arabic name of
the vertex of heaven (ras meaning a head); and the qualifying
al-ras, the most important part of the phrase, has been improperly
dropped. So far from the reading cenith being wrong here,
it is most entirely right, and may be found (better spelt cenit)
in the same sense in Messahala. See p. 213, second footnote.
For cenith, some late copies have signet, evidently taken
from the Latin word signum. They make the same mistake even
in l. 12 of section 18.