The Life and Works of Professor Mohammad Abdul Jabbar, Chapter One.

At that time there was no electricity in Motijheel. We used to see wild foxes roaming around the area in the evening.

In those days, as a young boy I would wake up in the middle of the night for nature’s call and see my Dad on the veranda steadily looking at the sky, watching the stars, following their path. I remember seeing him in the winter with just a light shawl wrapped around him, completely oblivious to the cold weather. This was Professor Mohammad Abdul Jabbar.

I also remember seeing, day after day, Professor Jabbar reading books on ancient Indian astronomy. This included Puthis, an ancient manuscript written in the Sanskrit language at Ishwar Pathshala Primary School in Comilla. It should be noted that it used to take almost a whole day to go from Dhaka to Comilla at that time. The Professor also collected several books on ancient Chinese astronomy from Rammala Library in Comilla.

Professor Jabbar also spent many days in Aliya Madrasa in Dhaka, reading books on Muslim astronomy in both Urdu and Arabic. From a pile of abandoned books of the-then Normal School of Dhaka, he collected the book School Atlas of Astronomy written by Alex Keith Johnston. He also collected another Sanskrit book called “Bhagol-Chitram” at the same time.

These days, collecting such theories and information can be done in a matter of seconds via the internet. For example, I could call Mr. M. Amin Milon, current president of the Bangladesh Astronomical Association, "Why does life exist on Earth and not on Mars despite the similarities between Earth and Mars in all aspects of the Solar System?" Mr. Milon will reply on the phone, “You will get a simple explanation by going to YouTube and opening the video called Why Mars Died, and Earth Lived by SpaceRip.

In addition, these days, any information on space, stars, planets, constellations, nebulae, spacecraft, or even any theories, data or images related to astronomy you may want to research, you can now access them at your fingertips via a computer, or even a phone, connected to the internet. It just takes a matter of seconds.

Back when Professor Jabbar was studying this, such ideas were not within any stretch of the imagination! So, I hope you can understand, what length of passion, dedication and patience a humble astronomer had to go through to collect all these data from obscure places.

Professor Jabbar's tireless efforts to practice astronomy and to collect past and present theories and data on the subject is evident from his 1967 book, An Introduction to Tara.

The following is an excerpt from the book, lovingly translated by his children and grand-children.

To recognise stars, you need to understand the halo of the Milky Way [also called the Stellar halo], and get a general idea of the layout of the halo. This can be made from the structure of the conventional diagrams of the halo.

Knowing which star is located in which part of the diagram makes it easier to identify stars in photographs. Collecting ancient images of constellation is extremely difficult.

Unexpectedly, I came across a book containing ancient illustrations on this subject. From a pile of abandoned books of the-then Normal School (presently Junior Training College) of Dhaka, I collected the book School Atlas of Astronomy written by Alex Keith Johnston, published in 1856. This book contains old photographs of planets, stars and constellations visible from our solar system, but no diagrams. The school library had been open for over a hundred years and unfortunately due to the ageing of the books, the condition of the pages were so fragile & brittle that it was not possible to recover all the pictures from within it.

I gave an artist, Hashem Khan, an idea of each image, along with the written descriptions, from which he was able to recover some of the obscure and vague pictures in the books of Johnston. As a result of the deterioration of the book, all the images were showing white spots. It was difficult to interpret the images to understand what was a star and what was an age blemish.

For that, I had to draw out the position of stars in different parts of the sketch with respect to those in the book Atlas of the Sky written by Vincent de Callataÿ, published in 1958. Using this method, it took about a year to finish all the sketches. Indian stars, Arabic Mansions of the Moon (Manzils), and Chinese officials (xīng guān) are all part of the moon's orbit.

The names of the Arabic 28 were taken from Tafseer Al Kashaf. To know their location and their relationship with Indian stars, I went to the library of the Saraswat Society, Dhaka, and researched the book Hindu Astronomy, written by William Brennand, published in 1896.

To learn the Arabic names, I visited the library of Aliya Madrasa, Dhaka, and read a book from Lahore, written in Urdu. I do not recall the name.



To learn the Sanskrit names of the stars, I found these from Bhagol-Chitram, a Sanskrit book that I also found in the piles of abandoned books of the Normal School. Nothing was known about the author or publication date of the book. Sadly the book was so old and in such poor condition that the pages crumbled to pieces when turned. The book contained the names and pictures of constellations and stars of Hindu astronomy. Various verses from many Sanskrit texts referring to many planets and stars were cited.

The above quotation is lovingly shared here, only to show what time, effort, and expenditure Professor Jabbar spent to write this book. For this, he did not receive any kind of support, public or private, institutional or non-institutional. Yet even though the task was thankless, he continued writing for almost ten years.

Professor Jabbar was sure that no publisher in Bangladesh would agree to publish a book that has no commercial value. He was a wise man, as several years ago, a publisher contacted Professor Jabbar's surviving children, to make an agreement to publish the Professor's works, with royalties to the Jabbar family. However, once the publisher realised his works would not be commercially profitable, they declined to proceed.

For Professor Jabbar's family, this wasn't any cause for concern. I remember him saying , “I have written this book, have collected all sorts of information, pictures, theories, for the pure joy of my mind. I will feel blessed if this joy is transmitted to someone else's mind.”

 Will we ever see again such a person to undergo such difficulties, to satisfy his curiosity, and to leave some shining light for the future generations? The Professor never saw the modern world where all this information can be found through a few clicks on a computer, but his family want to make sure his life works are recorded in the annals of history.

It is good to note that, eventually, with government support, the Bangla Academy (the-then Central Bengal Development Board) published three of his books on astronomy.