Abstract
The astrologer Abu Ma’shar Ja’far ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Umar al-Balkhi was definitely one of the most influential astrologers in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, in the Islamic world and Europe.1 From Kitab al-mudhakkarat (Book of Reminiscences) written by his pupil Shadhan, we know he was born in Balkh in Khurasan on 21 Safar 171 AH/10 August 787 AD; and according to Ibn al-Nadim he died in al-Wasit in central Iraq on 29 Ramadan 272 AH/9 March 886.2 His works on astrology display his masterful syncretic knowledge, drawing from Greek, Persian and Indian sources.3 Among his most influential works are Kitab al-milal wa al-duwal (Religions and Dynasties) also known as Kitab al-qiranat (On Conjunctions) which deals with the effects of celestial conjunctions on nations, dynasties and rulerships; Kitab tahawil sini al-mawalid (The Revolutions of the Years of Nativities), which describes casting horoscopes for the birthdays of clients and how to derive information for the following year by comparing these horoscopes with the clients’ birth charts; and Kitab al-madkhal al-kabir ila ’ilm ahkam al-nujum (The Book of the Great Introduction to the Science of the Judgements of the Stars) in which he provides a comprehensive philosophical model for astrology, presenting it as a natural science.4 The strategies for the naturalization of astrology that Abu Ma’shar adopts in his Great Introduction led Richard Lemay to assert that ’Abu Ma’shar alone attempts to justify the validity of astrological science by the use of natural philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1987), Chapter 3, p. 196. The dates of Abu Ma’shar’s birth and death are not certain due to discrepancies in several primary sources; see Charles Burnett, ‘Abu Ma’shar’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, EI3.
Charles Burnett, ‘Abu Ma’shar (A.D. 787–886) and His Major Texts on Astrology’, in Kayd: Studies in the History of Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology in Memory of David Pingree, ed. G. Gnoli and A. Panaino (Rome: Instituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2009), pp. 17–27 (18).
Richard Lemay, Abu Ma’shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century: The Recovery of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy through Arabic Astrology (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1962), p. 45.
Ibn al-Nadim, Kitab al-Fihrist, 2 vols. (Beirut: Khayats, 1964), I, p. 277.
Muhassin ibn ’Ali al-Tanukhi, Niswar al-muhadara wa akhbar al-mudhakara, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1971–3), II, pp. 324–6.
Ibn Tawus, The Faraj al-mahmum of Ibn Tawus, trans. and ed. Zaina Matar, 2 vols. (unpublished doctoral thesis, New York University, 1987), I, pp. 144–5, 142.
George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1994), Pt. 1, Chapter 2, p. 70.
Dimitri Gutas, ‘Certainty, Doubt, Error: Comments on Epistemological Foundations of Medieval Arabic Science’, Early Science and Medicine, 7 (2002), pp. 276–89 (278–9).
Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi, Kitab al-madkhal al-kabir ila ’ilm ahkam al-nujum (The Great Introduction), ed. Richard Lemay, 9 vols. (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1995–6), II, p. 2.
Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 187.
George Saliba, ‘The Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society’, in Magic and Divination in Early Islam, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2004), pp. 341–70 (341). Muslim Spain played a pivotal role in the development of sciences and arts during the medieval period, but it is in Baghdad that a kind of Islamic scientific renascence first sparked. Scientific activity flourished in Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
See A. I. Sabra, Optics, Astronomy, and Logic: Studies in Arabic Science and Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1994), I, p. 237.
Sabra, Optics, Astronomy, and Logic, pp. 223–8; Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy, pp. 51–2; David Pingree, ‘Astrology’, in The Cambridge History of Arabic Learning: Religion, Learning, and Science in the ’Abbasid Period, ed. M. J. L. Young, J. D. Latham and R. B. Serjeant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 290–9 (290);
Charles Burnett, ‘The Certitude of Astrology: The Scientific Methodology of al-Qabisi and Abu Ma’shar’, Early Science and Medicine, 7 (2002), pp. 198–213 (201).
C. A. Qadir, Philosophy and Science in the Islamic World (London: Croom Helm, 1998), p. 35.
Bernd Radtke, ‘The Attitude of Islamic Theology and Philosophy to Astrology’, Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies, 8 (2004), pp. 1–11 (6).
Abu Ma’shar, Al-Madkhal, II, p. 3, p. 5; Peter Adamson, ‘Abu Ma’shar, al-Kindi, and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology’, Recherches de philosophie et théologie médiévales, 69 (2002), pp. 245–70 (248).
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, ed. and trans. F. E. Robins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 3.
Aristotle, ‘Physics’, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), Bk. I, p. 315 (184a10–13).
Lemay, Abu Ma’shar, p. 45; Adamson, ‘Abu Ma’shar, al-Kindi, and the Philosophical Defense of Astrology’, pp. 247–8; Andrea Falcon, Aristotle and the Science of Nature: Unity without Uniformity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 4–5;
Charles Burnett, ‘Aristotle as an Authority on Judicial Astrology’, in Florilegium Medievale: Études offertes à Jacqueline Hamesse à l’occasion de son éméritat, ed. José Francisco Meirinhos and Olga Weijers (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fidem, 2009), pp. 41–62 (39).
Derek Collin, ‘Nature, Cause, and Agency in Greek Magic, Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974), 18 (2003), pp. 20–1 (24–5).
Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen Mackenna (London: Penguin Books, 1991), II:3, p. 76.
Proclus, The Elements of Theology, trans. E. R. Dodds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), Chapter 1, Line 7, prop. 165; ‘commentary’, p. 284.
Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon and Jackson P. Hershbell (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), Bk. I, 17, p. 65.
Julius Firmicus Maternus, Ancient Astrology, Theory and Practice: Mathesos Libri VIII, trans. Jean Rhys Bram (Abingdon: Astrology Classics, 2005), Bk. I, Chapter 4, p. 17.
Ibn Hibinta, Al-Mughni fi ahkam al-nujum, ed. Fuat Sezgin, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Institute of Arabic-Islamic Science-Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1987);
Al-Qabisi, Introduction to Astrology, ed. and trans. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto and Michio Yano (London: Warburg Institute, 2004);
Al-Biruni, The Book of Instructions in the Elements of the Art of Astrology, trans. R. R. Wright (London: Luzac & Co., 1934).
Charles Burnett, ‘Al-Kindi On Judicial Astrology: “The Forty Chapters”’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 3 (1993), pp. 77–117 (79).
David Pingree, The Thousands of Abu Ma’shar (London: Warburg Institute, 1968), Chapter 5, pp. 41–2;
David Pingree, ‘Masha’allah: Some Sasanian and Syriac Sources’, in Essays in Islamic Philosophy and Science, ed. George F. Hourani (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975), pp. 5–15 (9); in this essay, Pingree notes that the attribution of this treatise to Masha’allah cannot be absolutely affirmed but adds that there is no reason to completely reject it.
Masha’allah, ‘On the Knowledge of the Motion of the Orb’, in Works of Sahl and Masha’allah, ed. Benjamin N. Dykes (Minnesota, MN: Cazimi Press, 2008), pp. 243–99 (244–5).
Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, ’Al-Ibana ’an sujud al-jarm al-aqsa wa ta’atihi li Allah ’azza wa jalla’ (‘On the Explanation of the Bowing of the Outermost Body’), in Rasa’il al-Kindi al-Falsafiyya, ed. Muhammad ’Abd al-Hadi, 2 vols. (Egypt: Dar al-fikr al-’arabi, 1950–3), I, pp. 244–61 (245–7);
Al-Kindi, ‘The Prostration of the Outermost Body’, in The Philosophical Works of al-Kindi, ed. Peter Adamson and Peter Pormann (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 175–6.
Emilie Savage-Smith and Evelyn Edson, Medieval Views of the Cosmos (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2004), pp. 46–8.
Peter Struck, ‘A World Full of Signs: Understanding Divination in Ancient Stoicism’, in Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays in Astrology and Divination, ed. Patrick Curry and Angela Voss (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp. 3–20 (7–8); Lemay, Abu Ma’shar, pp. 44, 106.
John D. North, ‘Celestial Influence: The Major Premiss of Astrology’, in ‘Astrologi Hallucinati’: Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s Time, ed. Paola Zambelli (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), pp. 45–100 (55).
The topic of magnetism generated a tradition which aimed to explain how lodestone attracts iron. There is much to be said about the development of the history of magnetism, but in the present work, the topic of magnetism is mentioned only in relation to astrological theories which posit that the stars act upon the sublunar world in a manner analogous to lodestone’s attraction of iron. See Charles Burnett, ‘Music and Magnetism: From Abu Ma’shar to Kircher’, in Music and Esotericism, ed. Laurence Wuidar (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 13–21.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Liana Saif
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Saif, L. (2015). Arabic Theories of Astral Influences: Abu Ma’shar al-Balkhi. In: The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137399472_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137399472_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-57399-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39947-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)