A commentary on v. 60 of the Centiloquium, dealing with the outcome of an illness according to the fixed stars of the twelve signs and other astrological parameters. The earliest manuscript (Erfurt, UFB, Dep. Erf. CA 4º 215) was copied in England in the beginning of the fourteenth century, but the text may well be older, for it seems to be alluded to by Henry Bate of Mechelen in his De diebus creticis periodorumque causis (after 1281), c. 17: ‘Adhuc et ymaginum stellarum fixarum a quibus equidem omnis dependet transmutatio eorum que in spera generabilium continentur’ (ed. Dell’Anna, II, 125). In MSS Cambridge, PC, 204 and Oxford, BL, Ashmole 345, the commentary is preceded by the original text of v. 60 in Plato of Tivoli’s translation (C.3.1.1) (‘Albahaemi sane et certe sunt hore in quibus declarantur mutationes — omnis stella secundum quod illi de moribus’; the last paragraph of Abuiafar’s commentary has been left out) and the whole work is entitled Propositio Tholomei de crisi. MS Erfurt, UFB, Dep. Erf. CA 4º 215 bears no title and preserves the commentary alone, but it is the only manuscript that includes the diagram referred to in the opening sentence, where both the Cambridge and Oxford MSS have a blank space for it.

Note According to its table of content, MS Mühlhausen, SA, 60/2 (see) once had a ‘Figura Ptolemei de crisi’, which probably denotes the diagram of the present commentary.

Text ‘(Erfurt, UFB, Dep. Erf. CA 4º 215) (88va) [figure]. (88vb) [text] Hec est figura Tpolomei (!) quam Haly suus comentator primitus sic decripsit. Quando et qualiter acuti morbi debent habere suas determinationes sive ad bonum sive ad malum — ut in pluribus ad salutem, set secundum motum proprium Lune fieret in 21 die. Explicit.’

Bibl. F. J. Carmody, Arabic Astronomical and Astrological Sciences in Latin Translation. A Critical Bibliography, Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1956, 21 (nos 38 and 40); G. Dell’Anna, Dies critici. La teoria della ciclicità delle patologie nel XIV secolo, Galatina, 1999, 2 vols, I, 83-86 and 137-141 n. 1-8; R. Lemay, Le Kitāb aṯ-Ṯamara (Liber fructus, Centiloquium) d’Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf [Ps.-Ptolémée], 1999 [unpublished], I, 423-424.

Modern ed. Dell’Anna, II, 7-9 (from MS Cambridge, PC, 204).