Conjuncting Astrology and Lettrism, Islam and Judaism (original) (raw)
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Characterizing Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World
This conference used the particular case study of astrology as a means to study the broader implications of boundary-work. It examined the intersections among science, the occult, and the religious cultures that lived in the medieval Islamic world—including Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism. The conference complicated the categories of magic, science, and religion by looking at how boundaries between these fields were articulated by medieval scholars. Boundary-work, by its very nature, is interdisciplinary; the conference brought together scholars of religious studies, history, sociology, art, and science studies to collectively examine the chosen case study of astrology. By looking at practices of, categorizations of, and debates surrounding astrology in the medieval Islamic world, the conference shed light on the broader questions of when, where, why, and how definitions and boundaries are established between science, magic, and religion.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 2017
The Ifrīqiyan cum Cairene Sufi Aḥmad al-Būnī is a key figure in the history of the Islamic occult sciences, particularly with regard to the “science of letters and names” (ʿilm al-ḥurūf wa-l-asmāʾ). This paper examines his lettrist treatise Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt fī al-ḥurūf al-ʿulwīyāt (The Subtleties of the Allusions regarding the Superior Letters) to argue that parts of it amount to an esotericist unveiling of the hidden realities underlying “profane” astrology. In doing so al-Būnī identifies the world-shaping efflux of forces from the celestial spheres with the continuous flow of the letters of God’s creative speech, and implies a central role for Sufi saints and adepts in mediating these astral-lettristic radiations, adding a uniquely occult-scientific twist to views deeply embedded in Sufi tradition of the saints as key executors of God’s word and will on earth. In the conclusion, al-Būnī’s approach to astrology is discussed as part of a transconfessional wave of esotericism in the late-medieval Mediterranean, one that heralded shifting ideas about the order of nature and the relationship between divine and human agency. Keywords: Al-Būnī, astrology, esotericism, occultism, science of letters, Ibn al-ʿArabī, Arabic manuscripts, Kabbalah, 13th century, Mediterranean, intellectual history
The Reception of Astrology in medieval Ashkenazi Culture
The various contexts in which astrological knowledge found its way into Ashkenazi Jewish culture are identified, in an attempt to understand how these contexts influenced the study of astrology and shaped the associated modes of literary activity. A number of astrological doctrines gained a permanent place in the rabbinic batei midrash and yeshivot, where they played an important though ancillary function in the traditional curriculum. There were also tendencies to accord astrology a place as a socially approved practice, as documented in liturgical manuscripts and calendar texts. Finally, from the twelfth century on there was an increasing trend of separate literary works devoted to scientific and para-scientific issues. Although these works often appear in a mystical or esoteric guise, astrological concepts were among the most important issues discussed. It remains significant, however, that none of these historical phenomena in medieval Ashkenazi culture generated a systematic study of astrology or produced full expositions of astrology as an independent branch of human knowledge.
The ancient practice of astrology, the interpretation of the movement of the stars in the sky as reflecting divine powers and enabling prognostication of the future, had a deep and pervasive influence on early and medieval Islamic thought and culture. The history of astrology, which had been introduced into the Iranianised world of Central Asia through Graeco-Babylonian influence, goes back to ancient times. Moreover, with the spread of Buddhism into Central Asia, Iran and China, Indian nakṣatra (lunar asterism) astrology was introduced. Later Parthian (250 BC-224 AD) and Sasanian (224-651 AD) kings are recorded to have maintained a "chief of the star-gazers" (axtarmārānsālār) at court where a regnal horoscope would be drawn up for each king.
Discussions of Astrology in Early Tafsīr
The science of astrology, meaning prognostications predicated on the heavens' control over the terrestrial realm, has always had a place in Islamic civilisation, particularly at court and in popular culture. 1 However, astrology and astrologers were criticised in a number of disciplines, among them Ḥadīth, 2 Kalām, falsafa (philosophy in the tradition of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle) 3 and mathematics. 4 There are, of course, genres of Islamic literature that make positive use of astrology's principles; astrology's presumption that the heavens exerted control over the earth, for example, has appeared in different guises in schemes of emanation, Ismāʿīlī thought, and Ṣūfī cosmology. 5 While astrology's self-contradictions and astrologers' errors attracted attention from all sides, astrology's dependence on independent secondary causes raised the hackles of the mutakallimūn (and sometimes Qur'an commentators) in particular. 6 However, the earliest opposition to astrology on the basis that it wrongly premised nature's causal independence appeared only in the works of ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1015). 7 Still, by the end of the third/ninth century, the discipline of ʿilm al-hayʾa (astronomy, as distinct from astrology) had begun to define itself; 8 previously, ʿilm al-nujūm ('the science of the stars') was a term that covered both astronomy and astrology. The separation of astronomy from astrology was a signal event in the history of science in Islamic civilisation. 9 Thus, some weaknesses (and strengths) of astrology must have been understood before the beginning of the fourth/ tenth century, before Abū Maʿshar's (d. 272/886) integration of astrology and peripatetic philosophy and rationalisation of astrology's causal claims. Discussions of astrology in early Tafsīr represent one of the earliest appearances of astrology in Islamic civilisation. The earliest astrology texts in Islamic civilisation certainly presumed a physical connection between the celestial and terrestrial realms, even if that connection was not couched in peripatetic language. 10 Astrologers in Islamic civilisation such as Māshāʾ Allāh (d. c. 199/815) and ʿUmar b. Farrukhān (d. 196/812) depended on a Pahlavi
Reading the Future and Freeing the Will: Astrology of the Arabic World and Albertus Magnus
Scholars have become increasingly aware of the importance of a work defending astrology as “the most Christian science,” known today as the Speculum Astronomiae. There have been a number of articles and books written on the subject; most scholars, however, have concentrated on the authorship and dating of the text. This study turns away from the traditional scholarly orientation to focus instead on the content of the Speculum, its sources, and its impact on the intellectual world of the medieval period.
History of Astrology and Astronomy in Islamic Medicine
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
Living in the desert with an open space and a clear night sky, the Arabs had always depended on the stars to guide them on their travels, to determine the progression of time and the changes of seasons and weather, which were important for their agricultural and trading needs. These dependencies on the stars, however, did not stop at these physical phenomena only, but extended also into divination such as astrology and geomancy, which continued even after the coming of Islām. Although Islām clearly rejects astrology, this paper attempts to show that astrology-which somehow includes also some knowledge of astronomy, since during the medieval period, a practicing astrologer is also a skillful astronomer-continued to be practiced widely and openly by the Muslims, in the market place, on ships, at deathbeds and even in the caliph's court. This paper, however, will only touch one area where astrology seems to have some good reputation, which is in the field of medicine. Although astrology had its own opponents, especially among the religious scholars, it was welcomed in the caliph's court and was practiced openly by some of the physicians. We will delineate how and to what extent astrology and astronomy contributed into their field of medicine. The methodology of the paper is a literature review in the history of astrology and astronomy in the Islamic civilization.