Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi, Latinized as Albumasar (also Albusar, Albuxar; full name Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Balkhīأبو معشر جعفر بن محمد بن عمر البلخي ; 10 August 787 – 9 March 886, AH 171–272),[3] was an early Persian[4][5][6]Muslim astrologer, thought to be the greatest astrologer of the Abbasid court in Baghdad.[2] While he was not a major innovator, his practical manuals for training astrologers profoundly influenced Muslim intellectual history and, through translations, that of western Europe and Byzantium.[3]
Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi
Page of a 15th-century manuscript of the "Book of nativities" (BNF Arabe 2583 fol. 15v).
Abu Ma'shar was a native of Balkh in Khurasan, one of the main bases of support of the Abbasid revolt in the early 8th century. Its population, as was generally the case in the frontier areas of the Arab conquest of Persia, remained culturally dedicated to its Sassanian and Hellenistic heritage. He probably came to Baghdad in the early years of the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn (r. 813–833). According to An-Nadim's Al-Fihrist (10th century), he lived on the West Side of Baghdad, near Bab Khurasan, the northeast gate of the original city on the west Bank of the Tigris.[7]
Abu Ma'shar was a member of the third generation (after the Arab Conquest) of the Pahlavi-oriented Khurasani intellectual elite, and he defended an approach of a "most astonishing and inconsistent" eclecticism. His reputation saved him from religious persecution, although there is a report of one incident where he was whipped for his practice of astrology under the caliphate of al-Musta'in (r. 862–866). He was a scholar of hadith, and according to biographical tradition, he only turned to astrology at the age of forty-seven (832/3). He became involved in a bitter dispute with al-Kindi (c. 796–873), the foremost Arab philosopher of his time, who was versed in Aristotelism and Neoplatonism. It was his confrontation with al-Kindi that convinced Abu Ma'shar of the need to study "mathematics" in order to understand philosophical arguments.[8]
His foretelling of an event that subsequently occurred earned him a lashing ordered by the displeased Caliph al-Musta'in. "I hit the mark and I was severely punished."[9]
An-Nadim includes an extract from Abu Ma'shar's book on the variations of astronomical tables, which describes how the Persian kings gathered the best writing materials in the world to preserve their books on the sciences and deposited them in the Sarwayh fortress in the city of Jayy in Isfahan. The depository continued to exist at the time an-Nadim wrote in the 10th century.[10]
Amir Khusrav mentions that Abu Ma'shar came to Benaras (Varanasi) and studied astronomy there for ten years.[11]
Abu Ma'shar is said to have died at the age of 98 (but a centenarian according to the Islamic year count) in Wāsiṭ in eastern Iraq, during the last two nights of Ramadan of AH 272 (9 March 866). Abu Ma'shar was a Persian nationalist, studying Sassanid-era astrology in his "Kitab Al-Qeranat" to predict the imminent collapse of Arab rule and the restoration of Iranian rule.[12]
Works
His works on astronomy are not extant, but information can still be gleaned from summaries found in the works of later astronomers or from his astrology works.[2]
Kitāb al‐mudkhal al‐kabīr, an introduction to astrology which received many translations to Latin and Greek starting from the 11th-century. It had significant influence on Western philosophers, like Albert the Great.[2]
Kitāb mukhtaṣar al‐mudkhal, an abridged version of the above, later translated to Latin by Adelard of Bath.[2]
Fī dhikr ma tadullu ʿalayhi al‐ashkhāṣ al‐ʿulwiyya ("On the indications of the celestial objects"),
Kitāb al‐dalālāt ʿalā al‐ittiṣālāt wa‐qirānāt al‐kawākib ("Book of the indications of the planetary conjunctions"),
Kitāb al‐ulūf ("Book of thousands"), preserved only in summaries by Sijzī.[2]
Kitāb taḥāwīl sinī al-'ālam (Flowers of Abu Ma'shar), uses horoscopes to examine months and days of the year. It was a manual for astrologers. It was translated in the 12th century by John of Seville.
Kitāb taḥāwil sinī al‐mawālīd ("Book of the revolutions of the years of nativities"). translated into Greek in 1000, and from that translation into Latin in the 13th century.
Kitāb mawālīd al‐rijāl wa‐ʾl‐nisāʾ ("Book of nativities of men and women"), which was widely circulated in the Islamic world.[2]ʻAbd al-Ḥasan Iṣfāhānī copied excerpts into the 14th century illustrated manuscript the Kitab al-Bulhan (ca.1390).[13][n 1]
Latin and Greek translations
Page spread from the 1515 Venetian edition of Abu Ma'shar's De Magnis Coniunctionibus
Albumasar's "Introduction" (Kitāb al‐mudkhal al‐kabīr, written c. 848) was first translated into Latin by John of Seville in 1133, as Introductorium in Astronomiam, and again, less literally and abridged, as De magnis coniunctionibus, by Herman of Carinthia in 1140.[14] Lemay (1962) argued that the writings of Albumasar were very likely the single most important original source for the recovery of Aristotle for medieval European scholars prior to the middle of the 12th century.[15]
Herman of Carinthia's translation, De magnis coniunctionibus, was first printed by Erhard Ratdolt of Augsburg in 1488/9. It was again printed in Venice, in 1506 and 1515.
Modern editions:
De magnis coniunctionibus, ed. K. Yamamoto, Ch. Burnett, Leiden, 2000, 2 vols. (Arabic & Latin text).
De revolutionibus nativitatum, ed. D. Pingree, Leipzig, 1968 (Greek text).
Liber florum ed. James Herschel Holden in Five Medieval Astrologers (Tempe, Az.: A.F.A., Inc., 2008): 13–66.
Introductorium maius, ed. R. Lemay, Napoli, 1995–1996, 9 vols. (Arabic text & two Latin translations).
Ysagoga minor, ed. Ch. Burnett, K. Yamamoto, M. Yano, Leiden-New York, 1994 (Arabic & Latin text).
The Great Introduction to Astrology, The Arabic Original and English Translation. Edited and translated by Keiji Yamamoto, Charles Burnett, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2019.
^In 1390 ʻAbd al-Ḥasan Iṣfāhānī compiled a miscellany of treatises called the Kitab al-Bulhan (كتاب البلهان), and in his introduction he mentions the astrological treatise on the horoscopes of men and women from the Kitab al-mawalid of Abu Ma'shar which is included in his book. This compilation was probably bound in Baghdad during the reign of Jalayirid Sultan Ahmad (1382–1410).
^The Arrival of the Pagan Philosophers in the North:A Twelfth Century Florilegium in Edinburgh University Library, Charles Burnett, Knowledge, Discipline and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph Canning, Edmund J. King, Martial Staub, (Brill, 2011), 83;"...prolific writer Abu Ma'shar Ja'far ibn Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Balkhi, who was born in Khurasan in 787 A.D. and died in Wasit in Iraq in 886..."
^Frye, R.N., ed. (1975). The Cambridge history of Iran, Volume 4 (Repr. ed.). London: Cambridge U.P. p. 584. ISBN978-0-521-20093-6. We can single out for brief consideration only two of the many Persians whose contributions were of great importance in the development of Islamic sciences in those days. Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (d. 272/886), who came from eastern Iran, was a rather famous astrologer and astronomer.
^Hockey, Thomas (2014). Biographical encyclopedia of astronomers. New York: Springer. p. 91. ISBN9781441999184. The introduction of Aristotelian material was accompanied by the translation of major astrological texts, particularly Claudius Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos (1138), the pseudo-Ptolemaic Centiloquium (1136), and the Maius Introductorium (1140), the major introduction to astrology composed by the Persian astrologer Abu Ma'shar.
^Selin, Helaine (2008). Encyclopaedia of the history of science, technology, and medicine in non-western cultures. Berlin New York: Springer. p. 12. ISBN9781402049606. Since he was of Persian (Afghan) origin...
^"Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi". TheFreeDictionary.com. Retrieved 13 January 2023.
^Bayard Dodge, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Islamic Culture, New York, Columbia University Press, 1970, vol. 2, p. 656.
^Bayard Dodge, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Islamic Culture, New York, Columbia University Press, 1970, vol. 2, pp. 576–578, 626, 654, 656–658 & 660.
^"Introduction to Astronomy, Containing the Eight Divided Books of Abu Ma'shar Abalachus". World Digital Library. 1506. Retrieved 15 July 2013.
^Pingree, D. "ABŪ MAʿŠAR – Encyclopaedia Iranica". www.iranicaonline.org. Encyclopedia Iranica. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
^Stephen C. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 189.
^Richard Lemay, Abu Ma'shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century, The Recovery of Aristotle's Natural Philosophy through Iranian Astrology, 1962.
Yamamoto, Keiji (2007). "Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al‐Balkhi". In Thomas Hockey; et al. (eds.). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. New York: Springer. p. 11. ISBN978-0-387-31022-0. (PDF version)
Blažeković, Zdravko (1997). Music Symbolism in Medieval and Renaissance Astrological Imagery. PhD diss., City University of New York, The Graduate Center.
Carboni, Stefano, The 'Book of Surprises' (Kitab al-bulhan)of the Bodleian Library(PDF), p. 3
Isfahani (al-) (1931) [1390]. Kitab al-Bulhan, MS. Bodl. Or. 133, fol. 34r. Bodleian Library: University of Oxford.
shar, balkhi, this, article, about, astrologer, historian, hadith, scholar, shar, najih, sindi, madani, latinized, albumasar, also, albusar, albuxar, full, name, abū, maʿshar, jaʿfar, muḥammad, ʿumar, balkhī, أبو, معشر, جعفر, بن, محمد, بن, عمر, البلخي, august,. This article is about the astrologer For the historian and hadith scholar see Abu Ma shar Najih al Sindi al Madani Abu Ma shar al Balkhi Latinized as Albumasar also Albusar Albuxar full name Abu Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al Balkhi أبو معشر جعفر بن محمد بن عمر البلخي 10 August 787 9 March 886 AH 171 272 3 was an early Persian 4 5 6 Muslim astrologer thought to be the greatest astrologer of the Abbasid court in Baghdad 2 While he was not a major innovator his practical manuals for training astrologers profoundly influenced Muslim intellectual history and through translations that of western Europe and Byzantium 3 Abu Ma shar al BalkhiPage of a 15th century manuscript of the Book of nativities BNF Arabe 2583 fol 15v Born10 August 787Balkh Khurasan 1 present day Afghanistan Died9 March 886 aged 98 Wasiṭ Iraq Abbasid CaliphateAcademic backgroundInfluencesAristotle and PtolemyAcademic workEraIslamic Golden Age Abbasid era Main interestsAstrology AstronomyInfluencedAl Sijzi Albertus Magnus Roger Bacon Pierre d Ailly Pico della Mirandola 2 Contents 1 Life 2 Works 2 1 Latin and Greek translations 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 External linksLife EditAbu Ma shar was a native of Balkh in Khurasan one of the main bases of support of the Abbasid revolt in the early 8th century Its population as was generally the case in the frontier areas of the Arab conquest of Persia remained culturally dedicated to its Sassanian and Hellenistic heritage He probably came to Baghdad in the early years of the caliphate of al Maʾmun r 813 833 According to An Nadim s Al Fihrist 10th century he lived on the West Side of Baghdad near Bab Khurasan the northeast gate of the original city on the west Bank of the Tigris 7 Abu Ma shar was a member of the third generation after the Arab Conquest of the Pahlavi oriented Khurasani intellectual elite and he defended an approach of a most astonishing and inconsistent eclecticism His reputation saved him from religious persecution although there is a report of one incident where he was whipped for his practice of astrology under the caliphate of al Musta in r 862 866 He was a scholar of hadith and according to biographical tradition he only turned to astrology at the age of forty seven 832 3 He became involved in a bitter dispute with al Kindi c 796 873 the foremost Arab philosopher of his time who was versed in Aristotelism and Neoplatonism It was his confrontation with al Kindi that convinced Abu Ma shar of the need to study mathematics in order to understand philosophical arguments 8 His foretelling of an event that subsequently occurred earned him a lashing ordered by the displeased Caliph al Musta in I hit the mark and I was severely punished 9 An Nadim includes an extract from Abu Ma shar s book on the variations of astronomical tables which describes how the Persian kings gathered the best writing materials in the world to preserve their books on the sciences and deposited them in the Sarwayh fortress in the city of Jayy in Isfahan The depository continued to exist at the time an Nadim wrote in the 10th century 10 Amir Khusrav mentions that Abu Ma shar came to Benaras Varanasi and studied astronomy there for ten years 11 Abu Ma shar is said to have died at the age of 98 but a centenarian according to the Islamic year count in Wasiṭ in eastern Iraq during the last two nights of Ramadan of AH 272 9 March 866 Abu Ma shar was a Persian nationalist studying Sassanid era astrology in his Kitab Al Qeranat to predict the imminent collapse of Arab rule and the restoration of Iranian rule 12 Works EditHis works on astronomy are not extant but information can still be gleaned from summaries found in the works of later astronomers or from his astrology works 2 Kitab al mudkhal al kabir an introduction to astrology which received many translations to Latin and Greek starting from the 11th century It had significant influence on Western philosophers like Albert the Great 2 Kitab mukhtaṣar al mudkhal an abridged version of the above later translated to Latin by Adelard of Bath 2 Kitab al milal wa ʾl duwal Book on religions and dynasties probably his most important work commented on in the major works of Roger Bacon Pierre d Ailly and Pico della Mirandola 2 Fi dhikr ma tadullu ʿalayhi al ashkhaṣ al ʿulwiyya On the indications of the celestial objects Kitab al dalalat ʿala al ittiṣalat wa qiranat al kawakib Book of the indications of the planetary conjunctions Kitab al uluf Book of thousands preserved only in summaries by Sijzi 2 Kitab taḥawil sini al alam Flowers of Abu Ma shar uses horoscopes to examine months and days of the year It was a manual for astrologers It was translated in the 12th century by John of Seville Kitab taḥawil sini al mawalid Book of the revolutions of the years of nativities translated into Greek in 1000 and from that translation into Latin in the 13th century Kitab mawalid al rijal wa ʾl nisaʾ Book of nativities of men and women which was widely circulated in the Islamic world 2 ʻAbd al Ḥasan Iṣfahani copied excerpts into the 14th century illustrated manuscript the Kitab al Bulhan ca 1390 13 n 1 Latin and Greek translations Edit Page spread from the 1515 Venetian edition of Abu Ma shar s De Magnis Coniunctionibus Albumasar s Introduction Kitab al mudkhal al kabir written c 848 was first translated into Latin by John of Seville in 1133 as Introductorium in Astronomiam and again less literally and abridged as De magnis coniunctionibus by Herman of Carinthia in 1140 14 Lemay 1962 argued that the writings of Albumasar were very likely the single most important original source for the recovery of Aristotle for medieval European scholars prior to the middle of the 12th century 15 Herman of Carinthia s translation De magnis coniunctionibus was first printed by Erhard Ratdolt of Augsburg in 1488 9 It was again printed in Venice in 1506 and 1515 Modern editions De magnis coniunctionibus ed K Yamamoto Ch Burnett Leiden 2000 2 vols Arabic amp Latin text De revolutionibus nativitatum ed D Pingree Leipzig 1968 Greek text Liber florum ed James Herschel Holden in Five Medieval Astrologers Tempe Az A F A Inc 2008 13 66 Introductorium maius ed R Lemay Napoli 1995 1996 9 vols Arabic text amp two Latin translations Ysagoga minor ed Ch Burnett K Yamamoto M Yano Leiden New York 1994 Arabic amp Latin text The Great Introduction to Astrology The Arabic Original and English Translation Edited and translated by Keiji Yamamoto Charles Burnett Leiden Boston Brill 2019 See also Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Albumasar Islamic astrology List of Iranian scientistsNotes Edit In 1390 ʻAbd al Ḥasan Iṣfahani compiled a miscellany of treatises called the Kitab al Bulhan كتاب البلهان and in his introduction he mentions the astrological treatise on the horoscopes of men and women from the Kitab al mawalid of Abu Ma shar which is included in his book This compilation was probably bound in Baghdad during the reign of Jalayirid Sultan Ahmad 1382 1410 References Edit Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article Albumazar The Arrival of the Pagan Philosophers in the North A Twelfth Century Florilegium in Edinburgh University Library Charles Burnett Knowledge Discipline and Power in the Middle Ages ed Joseph Canning Edmund J King Martial Staub Brill 2011 83 prolific writer Abu Ma shar Ja far ibn Muhammad ibn Umar al Balkhi who was born in Khurasan in 787 A D and died in Wasit in Iraq in 886 a b c d e f g h Yamamoto 2007 a b Pingree 1970 Frye R N ed 1975 The Cambridge history of Iran Volume 4 Repr ed London Cambridge U P p 584 ISBN 978 0 521 20093 6 We can single out for brief consideration only two of the many Persians whose contributions were of great importance in the development of Islamic sciences in those days Abu Ma shar al Balkhi d 272 886 who came from eastern Iran was a rather famous astrologer and astronomer Hockey Thomas 2014 Biographical encyclopedia of astronomers New York Springer p 91 ISBN 9781441999184 The introduction of Aristotelian material was accompanied by the translation of major astrological texts particularly Claudius Ptolemy s Tetrabiblos 1138 the pseudo Ptolemaic Centiloquium 1136 and the Maius Introductorium 1140 the major introduction to astrology composed by the Persian astrologer Abu Ma shar Selin Helaine 2008 Encyclopaedia of the history of science technology and medicine in non western cultures Berlin New York Springer p 12 ISBN 9781402049606 Since he was of Persian Afghan origin Ja far ibn Muhammad Abu Ma shar al Balkhi TheFreeDictionary com Retrieved 13 January 2023 Pingree 2008 Bayard Dodge The Fihrist of al Nadim A Tenth Century Survey of Islamic Culture New York Columbia University Press 1970 vol 2 p 656 Bayard Dodge The Fihrist of al Nadim A Tenth Century Survey of Islamic Culture New York Columbia University Press 1970 vol 2 pp 576 578 626 654 656 658 amp 660 Introduction to Astronomy Containing the Eight Divided Books of Abu Ma shar Abalachus World Digital Library 1506 Retrieved 15 July 2013 Pingree D ABu MAʿSAR Encyclopaedia Iranica www iranicaonline org Encyclopedia Iranica Retrieved 11 February 2017 Carboni p 3 Stephen C McCluskey Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe Cambridge University Press 2000 189 Richard Lemay Abu Ma shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century The Recovery of Aristotle s Natural Philosophy through Iranian Astrology 1962 Bibliography EditPingree David 1970 Abu Ma shar al Balkhi Ja far ibn Muḥammad Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol 1 New York Charles Scribner s Sons pp 32 39 ISBN 0 684 10114 9 Yamamoto Keiji 2007 Abu Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al Balkhi In Thomas Hockey et al eds The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers New York Springer p 11 ISBN 978 0 387 31022 0 PDF version Blazekovic Zdravko 1997 Music Symbolism in Medieval and Renaissance Astrological Imagery PhD diss City University of New York The Graduate Center Carboni Stefano The Book of Surprises Kitab al bulhan of the Bodleian Library PDF p 3 Isfahani al 1931 1390 Kitab al Bulhan MS Bodl Or 133 fol 34r Bodleian Library University of Oxford External links EditAbu Ma shar al Balkhi at the Encyclopedia Iranica Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Abu Ma 27shar al Balkhi amp oldid 1133589521, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
