Al Thalimain: The First of the Two Ostriches

Al Thalimain is from the Arabic al-zalimayn, the two ostriches, and it is a dual: the name belongs to a pair of stars in Aquila and not to one. This is the first of the pair as the catalogue orders them by ecliptic longitude. Ostriches are one of the recurring figures of indigenous Arabian star lore, which read the sky quite independently of the Greek constellations and saw in this region birds coming down to the celestial river of the Milky Way to drink. When the Ptolemaic constellations were translated into Arabic, the older indigenous names survived alongside the translated ones and were later carried into Latin and thence into the modern lists, which is why the same stars can hold both an eagle-name and an ostrich-name.

Pre-Islamic Arabian sky-lore of this kind, organised around desert animals coming to drink at the band of the Milky Way, ran independently of the Greek constellations for centuries before the two systems were fused; the ostriches, ravens, gazelles and other creatures of that older tradition were gradually absorbed as alternative names for stars that the translators had already assigned to Ptolemy's eagle, lyre and archer, rather than replaced outright.