Work B.4.1
Pseudo-Ptolemy
أحكام الشعرى اليمانيّة
Aḥkām al-shiʿrā l-yamāniyya
Predictions of meteorological, social and political events for the year to come based on the position of the Moon in the zodiacal signs at the time of the heliacal rising of Sirius. The text is divided into twelve chapters (one for each sign) and a brief additional chapter on determining the zodiacal sign (i.e., of the Moon) in which the heliacal rising of Sirius takes place. The work is attributed to Ptolemy in the title of its only extant manuscript (Sezgin conjectured that MS Berlin, SBPK, Or. oct. 198 may contain the same work, but this is not the case). Its date of composition is unknown and the manuscript is undated (a dating to the 8th/14th c. has been proposed). Predictions based on the sign of the Moon at the time of rising of Sirius are a long-standing and widespread genre reaching as far back as the book On Nature attributed to Zoroaster in the Greek tradition (cf. J. Bidez and Franz Cumont, Les mages hellénisés. Zoroastre, Ostanès et Hystaspe d’après la tradition grecque, 2 vols, Paris, 1938, vol. I, pp. 123–127) and are often included in witnesses of the Malḥamat Dānyāl. Ptolemy is commonly invoked as an authority in such texts (cf. L. Raggetti, ‘Thunder, Haloes, and Earthquakes: What Daniel Brought from Babylon into Arabic Divination’, in S. V. Panayotov and L. Vacín (eds), Mesopotamian Medicine and Magic. Studies in honor of Markham J. Geller, Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2018, pp. 421–445, p. 425), but he is only described as their actual author in the present manuscript and in the Taqwīm al-shiʿrā l-yamāniyya (B.4.2).
Text: [Dublin, CBL, Ar. 5018]
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Bibl.: GAS VIIFuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Vol. VII: Astrologie – Meteorologie und Verwandtes bis ca. 430 H., Leiden: Brill, 1979, p. 312 (no. 4).
Ed.: None.
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