Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi

Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi
Page of a 15th-century manuscript of the "Book of nativities" (BNF Arabe 2583 fol. 15v).
Born10 August 787
Died9 March 886 (aged 98)
Academic background
InfluencesAristotle and Ptolemy
Academic work
EraIslamic Golden Age
(Abbasid era)
Main interestsAstrology, Astronomy
InfluencedAl-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 ابومَعْشَر جعفر بن محمد بن عمر بلخی; 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]

  1. ^ a b Yamamoto 2007.
  2. ^ 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..."
  3. ^ a b Pingree 1970.
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ 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...

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