Oriens 47 (2019) 348–364
brill.com/orie
Agency and Effect in the Astrology of Abū Maʿshar
of Balkh (Albumasar)
Charles Burnett
Warburg Institute, University of London
Charles.burnett@sas.ac.uk
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to show how the ninth-century astrologer, Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar
b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Balkhī, accounted for generation, corruption and change in
the sublunary world. He sides with the philosophers against the astrologers and takes
as his principal source the Peripatetic tradition. He shows that it is the movements of
the heavenly bodies, rather than their elemental qualities, that are responsible for all
elemental changes, and that these changes ‘result from,’ or follow naturally from, those
movements rather than are caused by them.
Keywords
Abū Maʿshar – al-Kindī – astrology – celestial effects – action and passion – Peripatetic
tradition
Abū Maʿshar Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Balkhī (787–886AD) could be
claimed to be the greatest and most prolific Arabic astrologer of the Middle
Ages. He differs from most astrological writers in giving explanations for astrological doctrine, which he does in terms of natural science and mathematics.
These explanations could be called philosophical and owe much to the Neoplatonizing Peripatetic philosophy that was in vogue in Baghdad in his time.
Scholars have drawn attention to the importance of his Great Introduction to
Astrology (K. al-Mudhkhal ilā ʿilm aḥkām an-nujūm) as a conduit for Aristotle’s logic and natural science.1 Other scholars have pointed out the possible
1 Pierre Duhem, Le système du monde, vol. II (Paris: A. Hermann, 1965), 369–86 (based on
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influences of the theological views of his contemporaries and the Islamic tradition.2 This article will concentrate on one aspect of his theory: his explanation of how the celestial bodies effect movement and change in the sublunary
world. It will attempt to tease out the meaning of Abū Maʿshar’s Arabic text,
and also show how his Latin translators interpreted this text.
Abū Maʿshar’s fame as an astrologer rested on both his writings and his practice as an astrologer. All his major works were written on the subject of the
science of the stars, ranging from astronomical tables, through all the branches
of astrology, to texts on the star worship of the Ḥarrānians and on the spirits of
the planets.3 His three major texts are, respectively, The Great Introduction to
Astrology, The Book of Religions and Dynasties (K. al-Milal wa-d-duwal, known
from its Latin translation as On the Great Conjunctions), and The Revolutions of
the Years of the Nativities (K. fī Taḥāwīl sinī l-mawālīd). Large parts of the first
and third of these texts were translated anonymously into Greek in ca. 1000 AD.4
All three texts were translated into Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
the first from Arabic (twice, by John of Seville, ca. 1133AD, and Hermann of
Carinthia in 1141 AD), the second, from Arabic (once, by John of Seville, with
possibly a second, lost, translation by Hermann), the third from Arabic (partially by John of Seville) and Greek (by Stephen of Messina in the 1260s). Abū
Maʿshar’s pupil, Abū Saʿīd Shādhān b. Baḥr, wrote down anecdotes about his
teacher and recollections of his practice as an astrologer entitled Mudhākarāt
Abū Maʿshar fi asrār an-nujūm (The Sayings of Abū Maʿshar on the Secrets of
Astrology, which was also translated into Greek and Latin). It is clear that Abū
Hermann of Carinthia’s Latin translation only); Richard Lemay, Abu Maʿshar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century: the Recovery of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy through Arabic
Astrology (Beirut: The American University of Beirut, 1962), 48–132 (based on the Latin translations) and Carmela Baffioni, “Una citazione di De Interpretatione, 9 in Abū Maʿšar,” in Aristotele e Alessandro di Afrodisia nella Tradizione Araba, ed. by Cristina D’Ancona and Giuseppe
Serra (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2002), 113–32.
2 Jean-Claude Vadet, “Une défense de l’astrologie dans le Madḫal d’ Abū Maʿšar,” Annales Islamologiques 5 (1963): 131–80. George Saliba has described in detail Abū Maʿshar’s defence of
astrology in the face of attacks by Muʿtazilites in his “Islamic Astronomy in Context: Attacks
on Astrology and the Rise of the Hay’a Tradition,” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith
Studies 4 (2002): 25–46, and the Muʿtazilite context is also mentioned in Peter Adamson, “AlKindī and the Muʿtazila,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 13 (2003): 45–77, esp. 66–77 (section
III on “Freedom”).
3 For full lists of his works see Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. VII (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 139–51 and David Pingree, “Abū Maʿšar al-Balkhī,” in Dictionary of Scientific
Biography, ed. by Charles Coulston Gillispie, vol. I (New York: Scribner, 1970), 32–9.
4 For the transmission of Arabic astrology into Byzantium in ca. 1000, see David Pingree, From
Astral Omens to Astrology: from Babylon to Bikaner (Rome: Istituto italiano per l’Africa et l’Oriente, 1997), 63–77 (“Arabic Astrology in Byzantium”).
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Maʿshar practiced astrology, even before he left Balkh as the Mudhākarāt record
an incident involving the birth of an Indian prince on the borders of Khwārazm
in 826 AD.5
But when one looks at his Great Introduction to Astrology (written in 848–
9 AD), one finds that, in several instances, he distances himself from astrologers
and, rather, regards himself as a follower of the truth, embodied in the philosophical tradition.6 It is his pursuit of the truth that, eventually, leads him to the
formulation of his definition of astrology: ʿilm aḥkām an-nujūm huwa maʿrifat
mā yudall ʿalayhi quwwat ḥarakāt al-kawākib min zamān maʿlūm ʿalā zamānihi
dhālika wa-ʿalā zamān al-ātī al-maḥdūd, which we may translate, dividing it
into three parts, as follows: “the science of the judgements of the stars is (1) the
knowledge of what is indicated (2) by the power of the movements of the stars
(3) at a specific time, for that time and for a specified future time.”7 What did
he mean by this, and what kinds of physical agency and effect are implied by
this definition?
They are not those of the classical writer on astrology, Claudius Ptolemy of
Alexandria (ca. 100–170AD), whom Abū Maʿshar criticizes for not understanding nature correctly. For, he says, Ptolemy believed that the planets influenced
the heat, coldness, dryness and moisture of sublunary elements by being themselves hot, cold, dry and moist.8 And their elemental qualities, in turn, were
due to their proximity or distance from the cold and moist earth, or from the
5 For these bio-bibliographical details see Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction to Astrology, 2
vols., ed. by Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2019), I, 1–6. The references to
the Arabic edition and English translation in this book are to the part, chapter, and section
number of the work. For the Latin translations of the text I use Abū Maʿšar, Liber introductorii
maioris ad scientiam judiciorum astrorum, 9 vols., ed. by Richard Lemay (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1995–6) (Vols. V–VI for John of Seville’s translation, vol. VIII for Hermann
of Carinthia’s translation, together with another edition of the Arabic text in vols. III–IV).
6 “Following the truth” is a repeated aim: see for example Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction,
I 2.3c, I 5.35, VIII 3.18.
7 Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, III 2.3.
8 Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, IV 1. Here he refuses to believe that the Ptolemy who
wrote the astrological Tetrabiblos was the same as the Ptolemy who wrote the astronomical Almagest, since the Ptolemy who wrote the Almagest was a consummate mathematician,
whose account of the movements of the stars, and whose astronomical tables and instruments were beyond compare, and needed to be followed by anyone who wanted to find the
true position of any star in the sky at any time. For modern accounts of Ptolemy’s approach
see Liba Chaia Taub, Ptolemy’s Universe: The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of
Ptolemy’s Astronomy (Chicago: Open Court, 1993), and Jacqueline Feke, Ptolemy’s Philosophy:
Mathematics as a Way of Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).
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hot Sun. For example, the Moon’s moisture was caused by moist exhalations
from the earth, and Saturn’s dryness was due to the fact that it was too far
away to receive any of these exhalations, while Mars’s heat was due to its being
close to the Sun.9 Now, Abū Maʿshar says, this is impossible, because the vapors
from the earth cannot ascend any higher than sixteen stades (the height of the
earth’s atmosphere), so cannot even reach the Moon.10 But, more importantly,
the planets are not hot, cold, dry and moist substantially or accidentally, since
they are simple bodies (ajrām basīṭa).11
In astrological contexts, Abū Maʿshar uses the same language as Ptolemy in
describing the natures of the planets as hot, moist, cold and dry, and their elements as fire, air, water and earth, hence following his reasons for making the
elemental order of the succession of the signs of the zodiac, air, fire, earth and
water, repeated three times. But this is only through analogy from their effects
and by speaking in a short-hand way. When investigating things more deeply,
he prefers the explanations of the “Philosopher,” i.e. Aristotle. He sides with the
philosophers against the astrologers.
Abū Maʿshar therefore replaces what one might regard as chemical effects
(warm things warming other things, cold things cooling other things, whether
through touching or through affecting the intermediate medium, an idea which
Ptolemy may have adopted from the Stoics) with dynamic effects. Things come
to be, experience changes during their lifetime, and die, because of the powers
of the movements of the stars.12 “Movements” (ḥarakāt) is the essential word
9
10
11
12
This is an accurate account of what Ptolemy writes in Tetrabiblos, I.4, ed. and transl. by
Frank E. Robbins (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), 35–9, and ed. by Wolfgang Hübner, Apotelesmatika (Teubner: Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998), 22–5.
Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, IV, 1.5b.
Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, IV, 1.6b: “All the planets are different from this, because
they are simple bodies.” This section resumes the argument in Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, I, 3.2c–d concerning the nature of the stars: “What are the stars? All the ancient
philosophers who spoke about celestial things are agreed on the fact that their essence
(dhāt) is of a nature different from these four ‘natures’ (ṭabāʾiʿ) which are under the sphere
of the Moon, namely fire, air, water, and earth, because, if they had come to be from these
four ‘natures’, what is necessary for these ‘natures’—i.e. change from one into another,
coming-to-be and passing away, and increase and decrease—belongs to them. For this
reason, the wise men said that the sphere and the stars in it are of a fifth nature.” Abū
Maʿshar regards the “fifth nature” as a “simple body,” unlike the other four “natures” (elements), each of which is a composite of two qualities.
See part of the title of Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, I, 6: “things coming to be in this
world from the power of the movements of the stars”; the phrase “by (bi)” or “from (min)
the power of the movements of the stars” runs like a litany throughout the work: I, 1.16; I,
3.6; I, 4.10; I, 4.14c and so on.
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here. One must imagine a swift movement causing heat through agitation and
a slow movement resulting in coldness, and consequent effects on dryness and
moisture, because these latter two qualities are passive in respect to active heat
and coldness: heat tends to dry things, cold encourages humidity.13 The infinite
variety of the movements of the heavenly bodies accounts for the infinite variety of changes and mixtures in the sublunary world. Hence the second part of
Abū Maʿshar’s definition of astrology: “astrology is the science of what is indicated (2) by the power of the movements of the stars.”
The Aristotelian background to this account of astrology is clear. One need
only quote Aristotle’s Meteorologica (I, 3, 341a19–24): “The Sun’s motion is therefore in itself sufficient to produce warmth and heat: for to produce heat a
motion must be rapid and not far off. The motion of the fixed stars is rapid but
far off; that of the Moon close but slow: but the Sun’s motion has both required
characteristics to a sufficient degree.”
The first Arabic philosopher to take on board the physical and metaphysical
theories of the Peripatetic tradition was the ‘Philosopher of the Arabs,’ Yaʿqūb
b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (ca. 800–870AD), for whom several of Aristotle’s works on natural science were translated. It cannot be by chance that an-Nadīm mentions
al-Kindī (and al-Kindī alone) as having a decisive influence over Abū Maʿshar’s
intellectual development, writing that Abū Maʿshar was a student of Islamic
tradition, until, at the age of 47 (i.e., in 834AD), al-Kindī tricked him into studying arithmetic and geometry.14 Abū Maʿshar himself does not once mention
al-Kindī in his Great Introduction (or, it seems, anywhere else in his works), but
several of Abū Maʿshar’s statements and turns of phrase are strikingly close to
those of al-Kindī, who was his contemporary in Baghdad:15
1) Abū Maʿshar: “the highest altitude of the vapours from the surface of the
earth in the atmosphere is sixteen stades, according to the Philosopher,
and the stade is four hundred fathoms.”
Al-Kindī, Letter On the Reason Why the Higher Atmosphere is Cold, Whereas What is Close to the Earth is Warm (R. fī l-ʿIlla allatī lahā yabrudu
‘alā l-jaww wa-yaskhunu mā qaruba min al-arḍ), § 26: “Marinus (of Tyre),
13
14
15
Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, II, 4.2b.
An-Nadīm’s Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. by Yusūf ʿAlī Ṭawīl (Tehran: Marvi Offset Printing, 1973),
335–6; The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 2 vols., transl. by Bayard Dodge (New York and London:
Columbia University Press, 1970), II, 656–8.
For a range of similarities between al-Kindī and Abū Maʿshar (in addition to those mentioned here) see Peter Adamson, “Abū Maʿshar, al-Kindī and the Philosophical Defense of
Astrology,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 69 (2002): 245–70. The closeness suggests a common milieu and common sources rather than direct borrowing in
either direction.
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Ptolemy and others, said that the tallest mountain which they observed
was sixteen stades—a stade being four hundred fathoms, and a fathom
being three and a half cubits.”16
2) Abū Maʿshar: the movements of the heavens are circular, perfect, and
without end, whereas earthly movements are rectilinear (mustaqīm), imperfect, and with terminal points.
Al-Kindī, Letter On the Prostration of the Outermost Body and its Obedience to God (R. fī l-Ibāna ʿan sujūd al-jirm al-aqṣā wa-ṭāʿatihi l-llah ʿazza
wa-jalla), § IX: “(the higher body’s) motion is circular and has no contrary,
whereas the motion of (earthly things) has contraries, since it is rectilinear (mustaqīma) and starts in one position and finishes in another.”17
3) Abū Maʿshar’s repeated assertion that the world lasts “for as long as God
wills.” Cf. al-Kindī, On the Proximate Agent Cause of Generation and Corruption (K. fī l-Ibāna ʿan al-ʿilla al-fāʿila al-qarība li-l-kawn wa-l-fasād),
§ VIII (12): “their forms are stable until the end of the time which the Creator of the universe—great be His praise—wished them to exist.”18
It should not be a surprise, therefore, to find that al-Kindī also states that it is
the stars’ movement rather than their elemental constituents that causes their
effects. This is stated most clearly in his letter On the Proximate Agent Cause,
which draws on Alexander of Aphrodisias’ On Providence to show that God,
by divine Providence, directly created the movements of the heavens, which in
turn are responsible for all movements and change in the sublunary elements.19
16
17
18
19
Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, IV, 1.5b [note that MS C of The Great Introduction gives
bāʿ (‘fathom’) as in al-Kindī]; al-Kindī, Letter On the Reason Why the Higher Atmosphere
is Cold, in Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafīya, 2 vols., ed. by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Hādī Abū Rīda
(Cairo: Dār al-fikr al-ʿarabī, 1950–53), II, 90–100 (100); English translation in The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, transl. by Peter Adamson and Peter E. Pormann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 208–16 (216). Hermann of Carinthia, De essentiis, 77rA, ed. by Charles
Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 214, has his own version of this doctrine: Hic autem vapor,
ut Aristotiles per altitudinem Olimpi concipit, a terre superficie non plus quam .xvi. stadiis
exaltatur (“This vapour, as Aristotle understands from the height of Olympus, does not
rise higher than sixteen stades from the surface of the earth”). The source is not Aristotle.
Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, I, 3.3b–3d; al-Kindī, Letter On the Prostration of the
Outermost Body, in Œuvres philosophiques et scientifiques d’al-Kindī, vol. II: Métaphysique
et cosmologie, ed. by Roshdi Rashed and Jean Jolivet (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 176–99 (196–7);
English translation in The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, 173–86 (184).
Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction, I, 2.25c; I, 5.3b; III, 3.16; al-Kindī, Book On the Proximate Agent Cause, in Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafīya, I, 214–37 (231); English translation in The
Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, 155–72 (167).
Silvia Fazzo and Hillary Wiesner, “Alexander of Aphrodisias in the Kindī Circle and in alKindī’s Cosmology,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 3 (1993): 119–53.
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The movements of the heavenly bodies cause heat in earthly bodies. The more
distant and slower the movement, the greater the prevalence of cold; the closer
and faster the movement, the greater the heat.20 Moisture and dryness are passive.21 The heavenly bodies themselves are not hot, cold, dry or moist, but the
variety of their movements is responsible for the multiplicity of changes in the
sublunary world.
Especially reminiscent of Abū Maʿshar are statements in al-Kindī’s letter On
Moisture and Rain. Al-Kindī, like Abū Maʿshar, starts with a criticism of the
astrologers’ belief that the stars are fiery,22 saying that they are, rather, of the
fifth essence, quoting the arguments of the “philosophers” (i.e. Aristotle) that
the planets are not naturally hot but that heat is generated “by the striking and
friction of the air caused by their movement; for it is in the nature of movement
to get hot, as can be seen in the striking of pieces of wood, stones and iron.”23
It should be noted that al-Kindī does not talk about striking and friction of
the air in On the Proximate Agent Cause, and nor do Aristotle or Abū Maʿshar.
The stars’ movements themselves are sufficient to cause movements on the surface of the earth. If those movements are fast, they produce heat, and if they
are slow, they produce cold. What al-Kindī does insist on in On the Proximate
Agent Cause is contact between the two worlds. Al-Kindī still has a physical,
even mechanical, idea in his mind. The sphere in which the planets revolve
is touching the sphere of air, at the junction of the sublunary and superlunary worlds. The acting and the acted-upon are touching each other: “Elements
either receive the effect through motion or through contact. What is in contact
with the last of the elements is not hot, cold, moist or dry, so they (the sublunary elements) only receive the effect of motion by being in contact with it
(the fifth element).”24 A natural development from this is to say that the friction
between these two touching parts causes the heat.
20
21
22
23
24
Al-Kindī, On the Proximate Agent Cause, § VI (2–3); Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafīya, I, 224; The
Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, 162–63.
Al-Kindī, On the Proximate Agent Cause, VI (5); Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafīya, I, 224; The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, 163.
Al-Kindī, On Moistures and Rain, preface 3: “You told me that you had become weary of the
lengthy controversies of the astrologers, of their confused treatises and their weak understanding, because they did not value science properly …”; Ch. 1, § 9–10: “Some astrologers
said that the stars are fiery. They were led to do this because they considered fire to be
the highest element …,” in Gerrit Bos and Charles Burnett, Scientific Weather Forecasting
in the Middle Ages: The Writings of Al-Kindi (London: Kegan Paul International, 2000), 97–
202 (see 97 and 99 for Hebrew, and 161 and 163 for English).
Al-Kindī, On Moistures and Rain, §12–13 (99 and 163).
Al-Kindī, On the Proximate Cause, § VI (1); Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafīya, I, 223; The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, 162.
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Abū Maʿshar, on the other hand, insists that, in the relationship between the
heavens and the earth, the acting and the acted-upon are not in contact with
each other. He writes:
Things ⟨behave⟩ in three ways: A) one is the doing ( fiʿl) of the thing, B) the
second is what is done (mafʿūl) by that thing, C) the third is what results
(munfaʿil) from that thing.
Great Introduction I, 3.7a
Abū Maʿshar is using three forms of the triliteral root meaning “do,” f-ʿ-l: the
active noun fiʿl, the passive participle mafʿūl and the active participle from the
seventh form munfaʿil. He goes on to say
A)
B)
The “doing” ( fiʿl, action) of a thing is in two ways:
1) by volition, e.g. the action of a person who stands or sits.
2) by nature, like the action of fire burning what is susceptible to
burning.
What is done (mafʿūl) is also in two ways:
1) by volition, such as “a built wall” or “a carved door” or “a written
line of script.”25
2) by nature, such as being burnt by fire.
Great Introduction I, 3.7a–b
So, A and B are exact counterparts to each other, except that one would have
expected the active “building a wall,” “carving a door” or “writing a line of script.”
What is most interesting is C. Abū Maʿshar explains:
What results (infaʿala) from another thing is different from these first two
modes. It is the movement and change that occur in one thing as a result
of something else when the two things are separated by a certain distance
(my emphasis) such as blushing as a result of shame, pallor as a result of
fear, the results (mā yanfaʿilu) in a man’s movement of soul and limbs of
the song of a singer skilled in singing, the movement, tremor, consternation, and perplexity in the lover when he sees the beloved, the bashfulness
in the beloved when he sees the lover, and the result and attraction in
iron as a result of the magnet-stone. In every one of these things and
25
This is what we would call artificial creation—the creation by man’s artifice according to
his intention.
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many others like them different movements may result from something
else because of the difference of their causes. So, different qualities in
individuals result from ( yanfaʿilu) these different movements, which are
according to the difference of these movements and the difference of the
conditions of the individuals receiving the movements.
Great Introduction I, 3.7c
Abū Maʿshar insists in particular on the difference between mafʿūl and munfaʿil:
Some people have thought that what is done (mafʿūl) by something else
and what results (munfaʿil) from something else are one and the same,
and that movement and change do not result in something else when they
are separated by some distance. But they are wrong.
Great Introduction I, 3.7a
It is the third mode of doing—the munfaʿil—which applies to the stars:
Similarly, when each star moves over this world in a natural movement,
natural movements and changes in the four elements result from ( yanfaʿilu) its natural movement, by which they receive qualities, and are
mixed one with another, in a condition (ḥāl) which derives from this
qualification and mixture, in different individuals of a species, so that
the qualities in each individual of that species are different from those in
another individual ⟨of that species⟩. So, the reason for the difference and
qualities of individuals is the movement of the stars and the receptivity
(qubūl) of these objects resulting from them.
Great Introduction I, 3.8
We are dealing with a reciprocal arrangement: celestial movement and terrestrial receptivity. Infiʿāl and qubūl at one end of the process go together just as
fiʿl and quwwa go together at the other end, and one could almost say that the
receptivity (qubūl) of the one is just as active as the power (quwwa) of the other.
The connection of the two sides is not described as a causal relationship, but
simply as a connection (ittiṣāl):
From their (the stars’) natural movements over this world natural changes
result in these four elements, from one to another, because of the natural
connection (ittiṣāl) of these elements with them (the stars).
Great Introduction I, 3.2c
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And:
This is because of the power in the celestial bodies, which moves, alters,
and changes the terrestrial bodies, and the receptivity to movement, alteration, and change by the celestial bodies which is in the terrestrial bodies,
because of their natural connection (ittiṣāl) one to the other.
Great Introduction I, 3.6
I believe that Abū Maʿshar is deliberately avoiding the use of the word “cause”
(ʿilla, which is commonly used by al-Kindī, or sabab).26
He gives several homely analogies of this link, as we have seen, the blushing,
the pallor, the movement engendered by the singer, the reciprocal movements
of the lover and the loved, and the iron and the magnet-stone.
Al-Kindī in his letter On the Prostration of the Outermost Body also refers to
the impression of the loved-one on the lover, and the iron on the magnet, but
in a significantly different way. It is in the context of his distinction between (1)
bodies impressing (aththara is the verb used) each other, through the motion
of the impresser (the builder of the wall is his example), and (2) other bodies
in which the impresser is not moving:
as love is impressed in the one who loves without a motion on the part
of the beloved. … and like the love of the nature of iron for a magnetic
stone.27
Abū Maʿshar does not talk of “impressing” (he uses the verb aththara sparingly, and in rather different contexts), and insists on the distance between
the objects that move each other. His example of “the effect on a man’s movement of soul and limbs of the song of a singer skilled in singing,” which is
not found in al-Kindī, makes one think of sympathetic vibration, something
already observed in late Antiquity. When one string is set in motion, another
string, distant from it, but tuned to the same or a consonant pitch, will vibrate
26
27
Sabab occurs once in the section that I am summarizing (Great Introduction, I 3.7d), but,
curiously, is omitted by both Latin translators, probably because they realize it is out of
place. In other places John of Seville translates sabab as ‘causa’ or ‘occasio’ and ʿilla as
‘causa’ when it does not have the meaning of ‘illness.’ For ittiṣāl John gives ‘coniunctio’ or
(in his revised version) ‘continuatio.’ Hermann’s translation is not literal enough to identify single-word equivalents.
Al-Kindī, On the Prostration of the Outermost Body, § III (6); Rasāʾil al-Kindī al-falsafīya, I,
184–5, The Philosophical Works of al-Kindī, 178.
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spontaneously.28 But Abū Maʿshar does not make this explicit, and, in fact, his
analogies of movement at a distance are a bit of a mishmash and not all appropriate (blushing and pallor follow shame and fear in the same object, not at a
distance). They resemble, rather, examples of the affections of the soul influencing the complexions of the body that occur elsewhere.29
So, he goes no further than asserting that sublunary changes result from
(infaʿala) celestial movements. And this leads him to the conclusion that:
Since coming-to-be and passing-away in this world result from their
movements, they (the heavenly bodies) bear the indication (dalāla) of
what comes to be and passes away.
Great Introduction I, 3.6
Abū Maʿshar explains what he means by “indication”:
There is agreement among the Ancients on the fact that what indicates
a thing is not the thing itself; such as what we see in existing things like
28
29
Charles Burnett, “Harmonic and Acoustic Theory: Latin and Arabic Ideas of Sympathetic
Vibration as the Causes of Effects between Heaven and Earth,” in Sing Aloud Harmonious
Spheres: Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony, ed. by Jacomien Prins and Maude
Vanhaelen (New York and London: Routledge, 2018), 31–43.
Among examples that occur later than Abū Maʿshar, one may mention 1) Qusṭā ibn Lūqā
(AD 820–912) in his De physicis ligaturis (not identified in the original Arabic), who states
that: “the complexion of the body follows the power of the soul; … from fear, sadness, joy
and bewilderment (in the soul), … the body is changed in its colour”; see Judith Wilcox and
John M. Riddle, “Qusṭā ibn Lūqā’s Physical Ligatures and the Recognition of the Placebo
Effect,” Medieval Encounters 1 (1995): 1–50, esp. 40, and 2) al-Ghazālī (ca. AD 1058–1111),
Maqāṣid al-falāsifa, Physics, chapter 5, who illustrates how the soul influences the body:
ed. by Sulaymān Dunyā (Cairo: Dār al-maʿārif, 1961), 381 ll. 6–10: “If the soul sees something horrible, the body’s temperament changes and perspiration results; … if it sees a
beloved image the spermatic passages become hot …” Infaʿala is not used in this context but see Edward W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts (London: Williams and
Norgate, 1873–93), part 1, 2420, quoting the Arabic dictionaries Siḥāḥ and the Tāj al-ʿArūs,
writes that “al-infiʿāl signifies the suffering, or receiving, the effect of an act, whether the
effect is intended by the agent or not … it is held by some to be used particularly in cases
in which the effects are such as the blushing in consequence of confusion, or shame,
affecting one from the seeing a person, and the emotion, or excitement, ensuing from
the hearing of singing, and the agitation of the passionate lover at his seeing the object of
his love.” Abū Maʿshar may have transferred these analogies from a psychological to a cosmological level. He does believe that the stars have rational souls (Abū Maʿšar, The Great
Introduction I, 5.18a), but does not mention this in respect to their effects on terrestrial
bodies.
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thunder and lightning, which indicate rain, but are themselves not rain.
Smoke may indicate fire, but smoke is not fire; the built wall may indicate
the builder who builds it, but the wall is not the builder.
Great Introduction III, 2.4
And this completes the first and second part of his definition of astrology: “the
science of the judgements of the stars is (1) the knowledge of what is indicated
(2) by the power of the movements of the stars …”
The third part of the definition is explained as:
As for what we say in the definition of the ‘specific time’ and the other
⟨times⟩ that follow it, we mean by it the time at which one infers from the
power of the movements of the stars what conditions of things they indicate at that time and what they indicate as occurring at a certain future
time.
Great Introduction III, 2.5
Thus, we have the full explanation of Abū Maʿshar’s definition of astrology:
The science of the judgements of the stars is (1) the knowledge of what is
indicated (2) by the power of the movements of the stars (3) at a specific
time, for that time and for a specified future time.
But this definition is not completely satisfactory. Powers should have effects;
they cannot be mere “indicators” (dalāʾil). If the concept of “indication” is kept,
it should be attached directly to the stars and their movement (as observed
from earth), and not to the powers of their movements. And this is what we
find in the title of The Great Introduction:
Praise be to God, who created the heavens and the earth with those wonders which are in them, and made the stars an adornment and illumination, and made them indicators (dalāʾil) and a guidance (hidāya) by which
one is guided.
This form of expression echoes phrases in the Qurʾān:
Sūra 16.12: The sun, the moon and the stars are disposed by His command. There is indeed a sign (āya).
Sūra 6.97: It is He who made the stars for you, so that you may be guided
by them (li-tahtadū “bihā”).
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The awkwardness of having “powers” as “indicators” probably led certain
scribes (or Abū Maʿshar himself in a revision) to substitute the root f-ʿ-l (“acting upon”) for d-l-l (“indicating”),30 which is reflected in the Greek translation
which uses the verbs poieō and energeō (both “acting”) alongside dēloō and
sēmainō (both “indicating”) for the role of the stars.31 When John of Seville
translated The Great Introduction into Latin he had no hesitation in using
the verb significare and its cognates (significatus, significatio etc.) and seems
unaware of the problem. But the other translator, Hermann of Carinthia, had a
different solution which could be said, in fact, to conform more closely to Abū
Maʿshar’s conception of agency and effect.
Hermann divided the three modes in which things behave as follows: A)
what acts; B) what is effected when ⟨the other⟩ acts; and C) what follows from
another. The examples are almost the same, but for C) Hermann writes:
What is done because of another [equivalent to munfaʿil ʿan ghayrihi] is
different from these ⟨first two⟩. For it is not effected when another acts,
but it follows by a certain kinship of nature when the other precedes, such
as blushing, shame, pallor, fear, consonant movements of the soul and
body, melodies.32
Here the examples are appropriate to the context, since Hermann leaves out
the statement that there is a certain distance between the two objects.
The movement of the stars precedes, earthly movements follow. Hence Hermann describes the stars’ action as leading (using the verb ducere), and, instead
of ‘indication’ (dalāla), he consistently uses the abstract noun ducatus (‘leadership’ or ‘guidance’)—which is, indeed, closer to the other term used for the
stars’ God-given role at the beginning of The Great Introduction—hidāya, ‘guidance.’ Significantly, when he comes to defining astrology, Hermann omits the
whole reference to ‘indication,’ simply writing that “astrology is the knowledge
30
31
32
Richard Lemay claims that this is a characteristic of certain manuscripts of a revision of
the original text made by Abū Maʿshar in AD 876: see his Abū Maʿšar, Liber introductorii
maioris, I, 184.
See Glossary 1 in Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction II, 201. The anonymous Greek translation, made in ca. 1000 is edited in Abū Maʿšar, The Great Introduction II, 7–116 (see n. 4
above).
Hermann of Carinthia, in Richard Lemay, Abū Maʿšar, Liber introductorii maioris, VIII, 11:
“huiusmodi motuum tres diversitates: primum quod facit; secundum quod faciente fit; tercium quod ex alio consequitur. … Quod vero propter aliud fit ab hiis diversum. Nec enim
faciente alio fit, sed alio precedente nature quadam cognatione sequitur, ut verecundiam
rubor, timorem pallor, musica modulamina animi corporisque motus consoni.”
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of the strength of the stellar movement for a specified time and for one following it.”33 Eventually, when he comes to use Abū Maʿshar’s ideas extensively in
his own cosmography, the De essentiis, written in Béziers in 1143, he explicitly
describes the leadership (ducatus) of the movements of heavenly bodies and
the following of earthly movements in terms of sympathetic vibration:
If such a strength of love exists between the kinds of music belonging
to the Different (i.e. earthly music), so that when one thing is moved
(commotus), another follows it promptly, being brought into the same
movements (motus)—whatever they are—without any difficulty at all,
how much firmer is the pact of faith between related species of the Same
kind [cosmic elements], so that the affects and condition (habitudo) of
all secondary species follow the preceding motion of the first and higher
species as an inseparable companion!34
While Platonic influences can be recognized in these phrases (especially the
cosmic division into Same and Different), Hermann remains true to the spirit
of Abū Maʿshar’s conception of the relationship between the movements of
the heavenly bodies and the changes that take place on earth. Such changes
‘result from’ or ‘follow’ the heavenly movements, rather than are simply caused
by them. Hermann extrapolates on the philosophical ideas which Abū Maʿshar
was struggling to apply to the truth of astrology.
It has become customary to distinguish between a hard astrology in which
the stars cause the generation, corruption and every other change within in the
33
34
Abū Maʿšar, Liber introductorii maioris, VIII, 38: “Est igitur astrologia scientia virium stellaris motus ad tempus diffinitum atque ad consequens illud.”
Hermann of Carinthia, De essentiis, 68rH, 148–9: “Si enim inter diversa musice genera
tanta vis amoris interest ut, altero commoto, alterum promptissime consequens in quoslibet motus facillime inducatur, quanto firmius inter socias eiusdem generis species fidei
pactum, ut precedentem prime celsiorisque motum omnis secundarum affectus et habitudo inseparabiliter comitetur.” Hermann refers to the ducatus of the higher bodies in
De essentiis, 74rC (p. 192) and 74vD (p. 196). The same use of the word ducatus is found
in the astrological compendium Liber trium iudicum, in a translation (MS Dublin, Trinity
College, 368, f. 54v) of The Fifty Precepts of Sahl b. Bishr: “Nam in iudiciis prima est ducatus speculacio. Ducatus autem celestis in rebus humanis atque mundi huius accidentibus
quasi universalis princeps est Luna” (“For in (astrological) judgements the first step is the
investigation of the leadership. The Moon is like the universal ruler of celestial leadership
in human affairs and the accidents of this world”). But Hermann clearly played a part in
the composition of the Liber trium iudicum: see Charles Burnett, “A Group of Arabic-Latin
Translators Working in Northern Spain in the mid-Twelfth Century,” Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (1977): 62–108 (67–70).
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sublunary sphere, and a soft astrology, in which the stars are merely indicators
of what God has in mind for His creation.35 Abū Maʿshar’s position has been
regarded as a softening of the hard version that astrologers were thought to subscribe to.36 His careful definition of astrology and his elaboration of a system
which avoids a strict causal relation and is more akin to sympathetic vibration
between heavenly and earthly bodies, steers a middle course between hard
and soft astrology. He may not be entirely consistent in following this course
throughout his astrological writings, but he laid down a model of agency and
effect in his Great Introduction to Astrology that, thanks to the popularity of the
work, could be followed by subsequent astrologers both in Islamic and Christian culture.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the advice of Marco Signori, Richard Taylor, Luis Xavier Lopez
Farjeat, and an anonymous referee for very helpful advice.
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