Al Zubrah, the Mane of the Lion

Al Zubrah is the eleventh lunar mansion, spanning roughly 128 to 141 degrees within Leo. Its name refers to the mane, the stars on the Lion's back. In the manazil tradition its planetary ruler is Mars, and its traditional talismanic virtue is voyages and trade, favourable for journeys undertaken for profit and for commercial ventures. Each of the twenty-eight manazil carries such a fixed magical property from the Arabic tradition, used in the timing of talismans and transmitted to the Latin West through the Picatrix and Agrippa. These are the conventions of that talismanic literature rather than claims about the stars, which here are the group along the back of Leo that the mansion scheme counts at this station of the Moon in its monthly passage through the ecliptic.

Al Zubrah's name for the Lion's mane or back is identified with the stars delta and theta Leonis, and its talismanic assignment to voyages and trade for profit places it among a recognisable cluster of commercially-themed manazil scattered through the twenty-eight, alongside Al Awwa's benevolence and gain and Al Fargh al Thani's harvest and revenue near the circle's end, suggesting that medieval merchants' practical interest in favourable timing for journeys and deals shaped which virtues were preserved and elaborated in the surviving manazil literature. As with several of the fainter central-Leo stations, Western sources transliterate the name inconsistently, appearing also as Zubrah, Zobra or Al Zabrah depending on the manuscript tradition being followed.