ASTROLOGY

Despite consistent critiques of astrology by Muslim scientists and religious scholars, astrological prognostications required a fair amount of exact scientific knowledge, and thus gave partial incentive for the study and development of astronomy. In the early Arabic sources, the term ?ilm al-nujum was used to refer to both astronomy and astrology. Soon after, however, astronomy was unambiguously differentiated from astrology, and a clear terminological and conceptual distinction was made between the two sciences. The titles ?ilm al-falak (the science of the celestial orb) and ilm al-hay?a (the science of the configuration of heavens) were used to refer to the exact science of astronomy, while ?ilm ahkam al-nujum (judicial astrology), or simply ?ilm al-nujum (the science of the stars), referred exclusively to astrology. Both fields were rooted in the Greek, Persian, and Indian traditions, and were cultivated for many centuries in Muslim societies. In all of these earlier traditions, interest in the science of astronomy has been closely connected to astrology.

The connection between astronomy and astrology in the inherited scientific legacies was founded on the idea of a correlation between stellar configurations and events in the sub-lunar world. Thus, for example, the same cosmology underlying Ptolemy's Almagest—the most influential Greek astronomical work—provided the theoretical foundations of the Tetrabiblos, an influential astrological work by the same author. In Muslim societies, astrology continued to be practiced and to draw on and encourage astronomical knowledge, and a good portion of the funding for astronomical research was motivated by the desire to make astrological predictions. A number of observatories were funded and founded for the professed objective of conducting observations that could be used in astrological computation. Astrology was also commonly practiced in courts. In particular, one such form of court astrology was iktiyarat—a branch of astrology that aimed at determining the optimal astrological conditions for initiating large undertakings, such as the building of cities or the launching of military campaigns. Another popular form of astrological prediction was mawalid (nativities), which involves charting the horoscopes of the beginnings of both personal and collective occurrences, including the birth of individuals, as well as the birth of prophets, historical leaders, religions, and nations. The classic work of Arabic astrology is Abu Ma?shar al-Balkhi's (d. 886) Kitab al-madkhal al-kabir (The great introduction).

Yet, although astrology continued to have appeal within the elite political culture and in popular practice, the larger, socially based religious culture vehemently opposed it. Moreover, while many astronomers served as court astrologers, many more condemned astrology and distanced themselves from it. Most of these astronomers did not treat astrology as a valid scientific discipline, and went out of their way to distance their exact science from it. Despite its continued practice, a clear line was drawn between astrology and astronomy. Thus, of the hundreds of Arabic works dealing with the sciences of the stars, the vast majority are on astronomy, while only a small portion of this legacy relates to astrological subjects.

See alsoAstronomy ; Science, Islam and .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kennedy, E. S., and Pingree, David. The Astrological History of Masha?allah. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Pingree, David. The Thousands of Abu Ma?shar. London: The Warburg Institute, 1968.

Saliba, George. "Astronomy, Astrology, Islamic." In Vol. 1, Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Edited by J. R. Strayer. New York: Scribners, 1978.

Ahmad S. Dallal