Endnote 36
Part II, §3, l. 30. Alhabor; i.e. Sirius or
the Dog-star, as is evident from the fact of its being represented by a
dog's head on the Astrolabe; see also the table of stars marked on the
Astrolabe (in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Ii. 3. 3, fol. 70, back), which gives
the declination 15° S, the latitude 39° S, and places the star
in Cancer. It is also plainly described in the same table as being
`in ore canis', so that it is difficult to resist the conclusion of the
identity of Alhabor and Sirius. Mr. Brae, following later copies
that have different readings of the numbers employed, identifies Alhabor
with Rigel or b Orionis. This is impossible,
from the fact that Rigel and Alhabor both occur in the diagrams
and tables; see, for instance, Fig. 2. It is true that Rigel was
sometimes called Algebar, but Alhabor stands rather for the
Arabic Al-'abur. The Arabic name for the constellation Canis
Major was Al-kalb al-akbar, `greater dog', as distinguished from
Al-kalb al-asghar, or `lesser dog'; and the star a Canis
Majoris was called Al-shi'ra al-'abur, the former of which terms
represented the Greek seirioV (Sirius),
whilst from the latter (al-'abur) we have our Alhabor.
See Ideler, Über den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der Sternnamen, pp.
237, 256.