Kaffalmusalsala

Andromeda / al-Mar’at al-musalsala, «the Chained Woman», drawing after al-Ṣūfī’s ms of Saint Petersburg by Roland Laffitte, Nommer les étoiles : 500 noms hérités des Arabes (2025), p. 324, and Catalogue of the Greco-Arabian Sky (2025), p. 23.

The asterism formed by the three stars ι, κ and λ Andromedae is called "Andromeda's right hand" in ancient Greek texts and their derivatives. One of the Arabic translations is Kaff al-Musalsala /كفّ المسلسة. Herein, al Musalala is from the translation "The Chained Woman" in Isḥāq and al-Ṣūfī and "Kaff" is for the hand. The variant Keff al Salsalat is given in Knobel (1895).

Kaffalmusalsala is a modern star name adopted by the International Astronomical Union in the IAU-Catalog of Star Names (IAU-CSN) for HIP 116805 (κ And, HR 8976) in constellation And.

Etymology and History

Almagest Andromeda in Stellarium, drawn and labelled in Stellarium (Alina Schmidt, Lea Jabschinski, Marie von Seggern and Susanne M. Hoffmann 2021)

Andromeda drawing on the Farnese Globe with a fish (unconnected to the other in Pisces) as her attribute, mapped to Stellarium. When her head is at α And, her right arm cannot be placed at ι, κ, λ And but needs to be placed further east (CC BY Susanne M Hoffmann 2021).

Hand of Andromeda in the Almagest

	Greek (Heiberg 1894)	transliteration of Greek	English (Toomer 1984)	identification (Toomer 1984)
7	τῶν ἐπὶ τοῦ δεξιοῦ ἀκροχείρου γ ὁ νότιος	(toon epi toy dexioy akrocheiroy 3 ho notios)	The southernmost of the 3 stars on the right band	ι And
8	ὁ μέσος αὐτῶν	(ho mesos aytoon)	The middle one of these	κ And
9	ὁ βόρειος τῶν τριῶν	(ho boreios toon trioon)	The northernmost of the three	λ And
23	ὁ ἐκτὸς καὶ προηγούμενος τῶν ἐν τῷ δεξιῷ ἀκροχείρῳ γ	(ho hektos kai proegoymenos toon hen too dexioo akrocheiroo 3)	The star in advance of the three in the right hand, outside [ of it]	ο And

Andromeda in Arabic texts

• Ἀνδρομέδα > Andrūmāḏā (Isḥāq),
• Andrūmīḏā (Ṣūfī),
• al-Mar’a, the Wife (Ḥağğāğ),
• al-Mar’at al-latī lam tara ba^clan, the Woman who has no husband (Battānī, Ṣūfī),
• al-Mar’at al-Musalsala, the Chained Woman (Isḥāq, Ṣūfī)

Hand of Andromeda

The Chained Woman in as-Sufi in Stellarium by Khalid Al Ajaji.

Andromeda's right arm has always been drawn in the area of the sky with this asterism (until Bode's new invention of the constellation Honores Friderici in 1795).

Spelling Variants:

• Keff al Salsalat,
• or Keffalsalsalat in Al-Aḫsāsī from Latin transliteration "Manus Catenatae", used for iota Andromedae (ι And).

Transformation from the Greek to Arabic:

The star ι And is described as Τῶν ἐπἰ τοῦ δεξιοῦ άκρόχειρον (Halma, II, 48-49), i.e. "at the end of the right hand" together with κ and λ And.

In Arabic, al-Ḥağğāğ translates as ^clā ṭaraf al-kaff, “at the tip of the right palm” and Isḥāq as ^clā ’l-kaff, “on the palm”. Al-Battānī does not mention these stars. As for al-Ṣūfī, he uses also the word al-Kaff in their description, and al-Bīrūnī does the same after him.

Then the following identifications appear chronologically:

	Arabic		English	Author	star
		al-Awsaṭ min Kaff al-Musalsala	the Median of the Palm of the Chained One	Marrākušī (13th c)	κ And
		Wasaṭ Kaff al-Musalsala	the Median of the Palm of the Chained One	Miṣrī (14th c.)	κ And
		idem	Idem	Tīzīnī (16th c.)	κ And
		Šamālī Kaff al-Musalsala	The Northern of the Palm of the Chained One	Miṣrī(14th c.)	λ And

Only this one can be taken as a true proper name:

	Arabic		English	Author	star
		Kaff al-(Mu)salsala	the Palm of the Chain One	Aḫsāsī (17th)	ι And

Nota bene :

Keff-i müselsele is indicated for κ And by Mustafa Pultar, name taken in the form Kaff al Musalsala by Roland Laffitte in Nommer les étoiles500 noms hérités des Arabes (2025), 323.

Remarks.

1. al-Aḫsāsī reads al-salasa in the manuscript, which is, as he quotes it (p. 436, n. 31), a scribal error for al-musalsala, "the Chained One." It seems reasonable to reintroduce the exact word.
2. In the transcription currently used, we write kaff and no longer keff, and the final /t/ of Salsalat is not justified. The name would therefore be Kaff al-Musalsala, which is roughly the spelling used by Mustafa Pular in his catalog for κ And.
3. The stars ι, κ and λ And all three deserve the name Kaff al-musalsala, but their magnitudes are respectively: 4.29, 4.15, and 3.81. As we can see, λ And is the largest.

Mythology

see Andromeda

IAU Working Group on Star Names

κ Andromedae in Stellarium: exoplanet display (Zotti et al. 2020).

Three false color images of the κ And ("Kappa Andromedae") system, generated from data collected in July 2012 with the Subaru Telescope in Hawai'i. In each image, the Super-Jupiter κ And b is visible to the upper left. Image credit: NAOJ / Subaru / J. Carson(College of Charleston) / T. Currie (University Toronto). See MPIA press release for more information.

The name "Keffalsalsalat" was suggested to the IAU WGSN in 2023 due to its appearance in modern literature (Knobel 1895). The name is not in Simbad or anyhow known in the public. From the group of three, Lambda would be the brightest, but has an older name (Asīdu); so we would suggest the second brightest, Kappa Andromedae (κ And), to be named with the Arabic term. However, we suggest to correct Knobel's spelling from the 19th century and name the star Kaffalmusalsala (كفّ المسلسة) (adapted to the IAU-Style Guide, simplified to pre-Unicode ASCII).

identification (Toomer 1984)	HR	HIP	type	Vmag	binary?	exoplanets?
ι And	8965	116631	pulsating variable, B8 V	4.29	no
κ And	8976	116805	high proper motion star B9 IVn	4.14	yes (one companion, 13 MJup, could also be super-Jupiter planet or a brown dwarf)
λ And	8961	116584	RS CVn Variable G8 IVk	3.82
ψ And	9003	117221	G3 Ib-II	4.966	double or multiple
ο And	8762	113726	Be Star B6 IV/V_sh	3.62	no

IAU Working Group on Star Names

The name was adopted by the IAU WGSN on 2025/05/08. The WGSN chose to adopt the name "Kaffalmusalsala" for κ And in the IAU-CSN.

Weblinks

• Website of the IAU WGSN: https://exopla.net/

Reference

• References (general)
• References (early modern)
• Ian Ridpath's website (Star Tales – Andromeda )