
Similar treatises called Zij were later composed in medieval Islamic astronomy. The origins of the almanac can be connected to ancient Babylonian astronomy, when tables of planetary periods were produced in order to predict lunar and planetary phenomena. Hence for him, weather prediction was a special division of astrology.

Ptolemy believed that astronomical phenomena caused the changes in seasonal weather his explanation of why there was not an exact correlation of these events was that the physical influences of other heavenly bodies also came into play. Parapegmata had been composed for centuries. With the astronomical computations were expected weather phenomena, composed as a digest of observations made by various authorities of the past.
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Ptolemy, the Alexandrian astronomer (2nd century) wrote a treatise, Phaseis-"phases of fixed stars and collection of weather-changes" is the translation of its full title-the core of which is a parapegma, a list of dates of seasonally regular weather changes, first appearances and last appearances of stars or constellations at sunrise or sunset, and solar events such as solstices, all organized according to the solar year. There were also written texts and according to Diogenes Laërtius, Parapegma was the title of a book by Democritus. The Greek almanac, known as parapegma, has existed in the form of an inscribed stone on which the days of the month were indicated by movable pegs inserted into bored holes, hence the name. The first heliacal rising of Sirius was used for its prediction and this practice, the observation of some star and its connecting to some event apparently spread. The flooding of the Nile valley, a most important event in ancient Egypt, was expected to occur at the summer solstice, but as the civil calendar had exactly 365 days, over the centuries, the date was drifting in the calendar. Many of these prognostics were connected with celestial events. Egyptian lists of good and bad moments, three times each day, have also been found. Successive variants and versions aimed at different readership have been found. Among them is the so-called Babylonian Almanac, which lists favorable and unfavorable days with advice on what to do on each of them. They have been called generally hemerologies, from the Greek hēmerā, meaning "day". The earlier texts considered to be almanacs have been found in the Near East, dating back to the middle of the second millennium BC. (The later alchemical word alkahest is known to be pseudo-Arabic.) Also around that time, prompted by that motive, the Latin writer Pseudo-Geber wrote under an Arabic pseudonym. At that time in the West, it would have been prestigious to attach an Arabic appellation to a set of astronomical tables.

The prestige of the Tables of Toledo and other medieval Arabic astronomy works at the time of the word's emergence in the West, together with the absence of the word in Arabic, suggest it may have been invented in the West and is pseudo-Arabic. The earliest use of the word was in the context of astronomy calendars. The reason why the proposed Arabic word is speculatively spelled al-manākh is that the spelling occurred as "almanach", as well as almanac (and Roger Bacon used both spellings). The Oxford English Dictionary similarly says "the word has no etymon in Arabic" but indirect circumstantial evidence "points to a Spanish Arabic al-manākh".

Apparently from Spanish Arabic, al-manakh, but this is not an Arabic word.The word remains a puzzle." Walter William Skeat concludes that the construction of an Arabic origin is "not satisfactory". Ernest Weekley similarly states of almanac: "First seen in Roger Bacon. Its first syllable, al-, and its general relevance to medieval science and technology, strongly suggest an Arabic origin, but no convincing candidate has been found". One etymology report says "The ultimate source of the word is obscure. But it is highly unlikely Roger Bacon received the word from this etymology: "Notwithstanding the suggestive sound and use of this word (of which however the real form is very uncertain), the difficulties of connecting it historically either with the Spanish Arabic manākh, or with Medieval Latin almanach without Arabic intermediation, seem insurmountable." The earliest almanacs were calendars that included agricultural, astronomical, or meteorological data. However, that word appears only once in antiquity, by Eusebius who quotes Porphyry as to the Coptic Egyptian use of astrological charts ( almenichiaká). It has been suggested that the word almanac derives from a Greek word meaning calendar. The earliest documented use of the word in any language is in Latin in 1267 by Roger Bacon, where it meant a set of tables detailing movements of heavenly bodies including the Moon.
