Arabic astronomy divided the Moon's path into twenty-eight manazil, one for each night the Moon is visible, and the Quran refers to them directly.

Twenty-eight rather than twenty-seven, because the count is of visible nights rather than of a sidereal month: the Moon disappears for a night or two near new and those are simply not counted. Each mansion is a small star group, and the system was used for weather, navigation and agriculture long before it was used for magic.