[publius911]

They gave us some cool star names.

I prefer the Greek and Roman names, but no one other than astronomers really care.

Nothing Arabic can possible be cool. Even their most magnificent architects were Jews, even if they were given Arabic names.

[cothrige]

I prefer the Greek and Roman names, but no one other than astronomers really care.

We should also remember the lasting contribution of J.R.R. Tolkien to the field, whose names I personally think should have pride of place over both the Greeks and the Muslims. That way we could all go out and watch Menelvagor as he rises in the sky. :-)

[Tailback]

Even their most magnificent architects were Jews, even if they were given Arabic names.

Sinan the Architect was a forcibly converted christian. He was forced to convert under the Devshirme (blood tax), basically an Ottoman version of jizya tax.

[Cronos]

Mohammed also robbed tons of his religious ideas from Judaism -- for instance, in the Koran, Abraham is about to kill Ishmael, not Isaac

Then, as the ummah spread to Iraq, it co-opted many of the Jewish rabbi schools. Which is why, for instance, in the Koran, the punishment for adultery is whipping, but in the Hadiths it is like in the old testament -- death.

[Verginius Rufus]

Sirius, Arcturus, Spica, Regulus, Antares, Polaris, Procyon, the Pleiades, the Hyades, Castor and Pollux are all Greek or Latin names. The constellations have Greek or Latin names, even those invented in recent centuries like Telescopium or Octans. But I think the majority of the bright stars are now known by Arabic names (sometimes garbled)—Vega, Deneb, Altair, Rigel, etc.—an accident of the fact that the medieval Western Europeans obtained Ptolemy’s work via the Arabs.