by its rising to the setting of another star, or to the meridian passage of yet another—proofs to which humankind universally resorts. The Most High says:

“And by the star they are guided.” (Qur’an 16:16)

Inferring times and places from fixed landmarks is something accepted alike by Arabs and non-Arabs, by the followers of all religions, and by the philosophers. Thus, when a person deduces the rising of the stars lying east, west, north, or south of the Pleiades from the Pleiades’ own rising, he is reasoning from one particular to another particular because the two are inseparably linked; this is not analogical reasoning (qiyās al-tamthīl). Should he formulate from it a general rule, he is then reasoning from one universal to another universal that necessarily accompanies it—not from a universal to a particular, but from one of two concomitant universals to the other.

Anyone who knows the mutual distances of the stars and which of them appear with the first light of dawn can, by observing them, work out how much of the night has passed and how much remains; this again is inferring one of two concomitants from the other. Likewise, someone familiar with mountains, rivers, and prevailing winds can infer from them the regions that inevitably accompany them.

When this concomitance is perpetual—known to have existed since God created the earth—such as mountain ranges or the great rivers, the Nile, the Euphrates, the Sayḥūn and Jayḥūn, or the sea, the inference is invariably sound. If the relationship endures for a shorter span, such as with the Kaʿbah—may God exalt it—built by the Friend (Abraham) and ever since held in veneration, never overpowered by any tyrant, then one infers in accordance with that duration: one may reason by it and about it. The four corners of the Kaʿbah correspond to the four cardinal directions: the corner containing the Black Stone faces east; the corner opposite it, called the Shāmī, faces west; the Yamānī corner faces south; and the corner opposite that is called the ʿIrāqī—provided the corner adjacent to the Stone is termed the Shāmī. If, however, that opposite corner is called the Shāmī, then this one is deemed the ʿIrāqī; hence it is described as the Shāmī-ʿIrāqī corner.