Introductorium In Astronomiam Albumasaris abachi octo continens libros partiales
“It is in this book, one might say, that the entire Latin Middle Ages learned the laws of the ebb and flow of the sea”.
An attractive rare and finely illustrated Venetian edition of a key astrological work by the great Arab astronomer Abu Ma'shar, who furnished the West with Aristotelian thinking.
An attractive wide-margined copy.
4° of 63 ll., 1 woodcut showing the author, 43 woodcuts, 2 diagrams, printer’s mark. Flexible later vellum.
215 x 157 mm.
Albumasar, Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abou Ma'shar al-Balkhî, lat. en (787-886). Introductorium in astronomiam Albumasaris abachi octo continens libros partiales.
Venise, per Giacomo Penzio mandato & expensis Melchiorre I Sessa, 1506.
An attractive, finely illustrated Venetian edition of a key astrological work by the great Arab astronomer Abu Ma'shar, who furnished the West with Aristotelian thinking.
Duhem, II, pp. 369-386 ; Adams A 567 ; Gaselee, Early printed books in Corpus Christi Cambridge, 166. Essling I, 525 ; Isaac 12913 ; Caillet I, 154 ; Sander, 214 ; The Heritage Library, Scientific Treasures, p. S, no. 31, and p. 30. Panzer VIII, 380, 344.
This 12th-century Latin version of Abu Ma'shar's immense introduction to astrology, "Kitab al-madkhal al-kabir 'ala 'ilm ahkam al-nujum" (translated by Hermann of Carintha), was previously published only by Erhard Ratdolt at Augsburg in 1489. This Venetian edition is rare: a single copy is known in the trade since 1952.
Of all the Arabic writers on astrology, the most imposing is Ja'far ibn Muhammad Abû Ma'shar (c. 787-886), known in the West as Albumasar. Born in Balkh (now Afghanistan), he travelled to Baghdad during the caliphate of al-Ma'mum (813-33) and there became the main rival of al-Kindi, the father of Arab philosophy, though principally he "devoted himself to the account and justification of astrology. He drew together into one great synthesis many ancient traditions Indian, Greek, and Iranian" (Hackett, "Albumasar", in Gracia & Noone, eds., A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, p. 102).
Abu Ma'shar was an important influence on such thinkers as Albert the Great and Roger Bacon, who commonly referred to him as the "auctor in astronomia", granting him the same status in astronomy that Aristotle enjoyed in philosophy.
This text was at the time the primary source regarding rise and fall of sea levels. The book is richly illustrated with woodcuts, including the opening one which depicts the author and is one of the best known representations of an astronomer from the Renaissance.
An attractive copy of this rare Venetian edition of a text by the most famous astronomer of the Abbasid period (circa 750-1258), and one of the most prolific medieval authors in this field.
“Among the works in which the Arabs dealt with the tides and which the Christians translated and studied, the earliest is also by far the most important. It is the famous Introductorium in Astronomiam by Abu Masar. It is in this book, one might say, that the whole of the Latin Middle Ages learned the laws of the ebb and flow of the sea.”
The astronomer is depicted in the act of observation on the superb woodcut that adorns the title page.
A nice wide-margined copy.
Provenance : ex-libris on title ; stamp "Duplum Bibliothecae R. Monac.", showing that this copy was a duplicate of the Royal Library in Munich (today the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek).
