This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Arabic Sky gathers three pre-Islamic readings of stars the Greek tradition read differently, readings independent enough that their own names, not the Greek figures, survive in modern star catalogues.
Banat Nash reads the seven stars of the Great Bear as a funeral procession: the four stars of the bowl are Nash, a bier, and the three of the handle are the Banat Nash, the daughters of the bier, walking behind it in mourning. The middle of the three, Mizar, is accompanied by the faint star Alcor, which Arabic tradition calls Suha and uses as a test of eyesight. This reading is entirely independent of the Greek bear, and it is why so many stars of Ursa Major carry Arabic names in modern catalogues: the names survived the translation of the astronomy and the figure did not.
Al-Jauza is the pre-Islamic Arabian figure occupying the stars the Greeks made Orion, a female figure rather than a hunter, her name usually connected to a root meaning the middle. Two of the brightest stars in the modern catalogue preserve her: Betelgeuse is a corruption of yad al-jauza, the hand of al-Jauza, and Rigel is rijl al-jauza, her foot; the Greek hunter and the Arabian woman are the same seven stars and are not the same figure.
Al-Thurayya is the Pleiades, the single most important asterism in the pre-Islamic reckoning of the year. Its heliacal setting and rising governed the anwa system, the rain stars, by which seasons and expected rainfall were divided, and the cluster was called simply al-Najm, the star, as though no other needed naming. It is the same object the Maori call Matariki and the Maya call Tzab, and the three readings share nothing but the stars.