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20:2 ·
This sign does not, like the preceding entry sign, mean the moon in general, but the waning moon, i.e. the crescent that can be seen just before the sun rises for a few days each month. A very similar sign for the waning moon is  which, together with the sign for Venus as the Morning star, i.e. the goddess of war,  , appears on the flags of several Muslim countries. For more information, turn to  in Group 24.
In astronomy and almanacs  sometimes represents the last quarter of the moon, i.e. the quarter at whose beginning the moon looks half, and can be seen in the morning with it curved side to the left in the Northern Hemisphere. It is also drawn  . See the preceding  entry for other signs for the phases of the moon in calendars, etc. in combination with a star (probably a symbol for the planet and god Jupiter, who was much worshipped at the time) was on the coat of arms of the Roman province Illyricum (roughly former Yugoslavia) during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. Around this time, 200100 B.C., with a star sign was also used on the coat of arms of Byzantium, today's Istanbul. As Constantinople the city became the capital of the East Roman State when the Roman Empire split in two 394 A.D.
A Turkish sultan is said to have used as his sign around 1100 A.D. After the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, became a symbol for the sultan or emperor of the Turks and thereby for the Ottoman Empire and, later, for Turkey.
It is not likely that the star on the Constantinople coat of arms before the Turkish conquest was drawn as the Venus star, i.e. fivepointed like  or eightpointed like  . It might well have been sixpointed, like Jupiter's six-pointed staff. In the twentieth century and the fivepointed star has become a general symbol for the Islamic faith.
is used to symbolize the Red Crescent, the organization in the Islamic world that is equivalent to the Red Cross in the West.
The sign was sometimes used to represent the archangel Gabriel in Cabbalistic mysticism.
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