Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi | |
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![]() Page of a 15th-century manuscript of the "Book of nativities" (BNF Arabe 2583 fol. 15v). | |
Born | 10 August 787 |
Died | 9 March 886 (aged 98) Wāsiṭ, Iraq, Abbasid Caliphate |
Academic background | |
Influences | Aristotle and Ptolemy |
Academic work | |
Era | Islamic Golden Age (Abbasid era) |
Main interests | Astrology, Astronomy |
Influenced | Al-Sijzi, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre d'Ailly, Pico della Mirandola.[1] |
Abu Ma‘shar al-Balkhi, Latinized as Albumasar (also Albusar, Albuxar, Albumazar; full name Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Balkhī 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.[1] 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]
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.
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.
Since he was of Persian (Afghan) origin...