Abu Ma‘shar
Kitāb al-Ulūf (Book of Thousands)
c. 850 CE
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Abu Ma‘shar (787-886 CE) was a Persian astrologer serving the Abassid caliphs in Baghdad, where he composed a number of manuals of astrology that combined Islamic, Persian, Indian, and Greek learning into a composite system that influenced astrologers and alchemists from the Hindu Kush to the Pyrenees. Many of his astrological texts survive, but his most famous work, the Kitāb al-Ulūf (Book of Thousands) does not. The surviving fragments and summaries show that this book was a chronology of world history, drawn from Christian chronographic material as well as Persian and Islamic sources, intended to demonstrate that past, present, and future events could be linked to the cycles of the stars and planets. The fragments of his book were collected by David Pingree in 1968, but according to WorldCat, there is no copy of it for almost a 100 miles around me. Therefore, I am collecting on this page some of the fragments of The Thousands that I have cited time and again for ready reference, though this is by no means a complete list. Since I am interested in the historical information more than the astrology, I have focused on the historical fragments rather than the astrological tables. Parallel summaries of the same passage from different authors are placed side-by-side.
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Hadji Khalfa (Katip Çelebi), Kashf al-ẓunūn (c. 1650), abridged in D’Herbelot, Biblioteque Orientale, s.v. Abou Maaschar (1697)
Abu Ma‘shar’s most famous work of all is that of the Kitāb al-Ulūf, which treats of the beginning, the duration, and the end of the world. It is here, he asserts, that the world was created, when the seven planets being together in the first point of the sign Aries; and that it will end when the same planets shall meet again in the last point of Pisces, in their exaltation, or dragon’s head. He also sets down, in the same work, the eras of empires and religions, with the time of their duration. The Christian religion, according to this author, would last no longer than fifteen hundred Arabic or lunar years. But it is very plain that that this great Doctor was very much out in his calculation.
Translated by John Peter Bernard et al. (adapted)
Translated by John Peter Bernard et al. (adapted)
Miguel Casiri, Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis, vol. 1 (1760), folio 170
His works on the practice of astrology are: On the Nature of the Stars, The Book of Thousands (in which he calculates the beginning and the end of the world from the motion of the planets) […] and one called the Tables of Conjunctions, where the time of the Deluge is demonstrated by the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter.
Translated by Jason Colavito
Translated by Jason Colavito
Al-Juzjani, Tabaqat-i-Nasiri 1 (c. 1259-1260 CE)
In Unnush’s [Enosh’s] time a son of Adam named Nabaṭī [sic for al-Yaqza, the Watchers], with his children, retired to the mountains of Jarmūn [Hermon], and devoted themselves to religion, and many others joined him. From the death of Adam to this period, according to Abū Ma’shar-i-Munajjim, [quoted] in the Qānūn-al-mas‘ūdī [of al-Bīrūnī], was 432 years. After some time elapsed, Nabaṭī and his descendants came down from the mountains and joined the descendants of Ḳābīl [Cain], who had taken possession of the hills of Shām, and parts around, who had increased beyond computation. Iblīs [the Devil] had taught them the worship of fire; and drunkenness, and all sorts of other grievous sins prevailed among them. A thousand years had elapsed since Adam’s death, and the rebellious sons of Ḳābīl and Nabaṭī began to act tyrannically. They chose one of their number to rule over them, who was named Sāmīārush [Semjaza]; and between them and the other descendants of Adam, who were just persons, hostility and enmity arose.
The sons of Shīs [Seth], and others of Adam’s descendants who acknowledged Shīs’s authority, assembled, and chose one of the Kārānīān Maliks, who are styled the Bāstānīān Maliks, to defend them from the wickedness of the sons of Ḳābīl and Nabaṭī; and this, the first person among the upright and just kings whom they set up, is styled Aylūrūs [Aloros, the first antediluvian king of Babylon from Berossus] in the Yūnānī [Ionian; i.e., Greek] language; and the Yūnānīs say, that he is the same as he whom the ’Ajamīs call by the name of Gaiū-mart. He was entitled Gil-Shāh, and was the first king of the Gil-wānīān dynasty, which also named the Pesh-Dādīān, and Bāstānīān dynasty. When Aylūrūs became king, 1024 years had passed from the fall of Adam, and the land of Bābil became the seat of his government, and the just sons of Shīs, and other just descendants of Adam obeyed him. When 1162 years had passed away, the countries of ’Arab, ’Ajam, Shām, and Maghrab became settled; and according to the Qānūn-al-mas‘ūdī, previous to Nūh’s flood, eleven kings of the Gil-wānīān dynasty reigned.
Adapted from the translation by Major H. G. Raverty.
The sons of Shīs [Seth], and others of Adam’s descendants who acknowledged Shīs’s authority, assembled, and chose one of the Kārānīān Maliks, who are styled the Bāstānīān Maliks, to defend them from the wickedness of the sons of Ḳābīl and Nabaṭī; and this, the first person among the upright and just kings whom they set up, is styled Aylūrūs [Aloros, the first antediluvian king of Babylon from Berossus] in the Yūnānī [Ionian; i.e., Greek] language; and the Yūnānīs say, that he is the same as he whom the ’Ajamīs call by the name of Gaiū-mart. He was entitled Gil-Shāh, and was the first king of the Gil-wānīān dynasty, which also named the Pesh-Dādīān, and Bāstānīān dynasty. When Aylūrūs became king, 1024 years had passed from the fall of Adam, and the land of Bābil became the seat of his government, and the just sons of Shīs, and other just descendants of Adam obeyed him. When 1162 years had passed away, the countries of ’Arab, ’Ajam, Shām, and Maghrab became settled; and according to the Qānūn-al-mas‘ūdī, previous to Nūh’s flood, eleven kings of the Gil-wānīān dynasty reigned.
Adapted from the translation by Major H. G. Raverty.
Ibn Juljul, Tabaqat al-atibbaʾ 5-10 (987 CE), 5-10 and Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ (c. 1250 CE), 1.16.24–17.16.
1. Abu Ma‘shar al-Balhi, the astrologer, said in the Book of Thousands: “There are three Hermeses. The first of these was the Hermes who lived before the Flood. The name ‘Hermes’ is a title like that of Caesar or Khusrau. The Persians name him Wiwanghan (i.e. Awanjhan), which is to say ‘the Just,’ in their accounts of the lives of the kings. The Harranians hold to his philosophy. They (the Persians) state that his father’s father was Gayumart, which is to say Adam. The Hebrews say that he is the same as Enoch, which is to say in Arabic, Idris.”
2. Abu Ma‘shar said, “This Hermes was the first to ponder celestial events and the movement of the stars, and his grandfather Gayumart taught him to discern the hours of day and night. He was the first to build temples to exalt God therein. He was also the first to study and discuss medicine, and he wrote well-measured poems for his contemporaries about things terrestrial and celestial. It is also said that he was the first to predict the Flood and anticipate that a celestial cataclysm would befall the earth in the form of fire or water. He made his residence in Upper Egypt, and chose it to build pyramids and cities of clay. Fearing the destruction of knowledge and the disappearance of the arts in the Flood, he built the great temples; one is a veritable mountain called the Temple in Akhmim, in which he carved representations of the arts and instruments, including engraved explanations of science, in order to pass them on to those who would come after him, lest he see them disappear from the world.”
3. In the account passed down from the early ancestors, it is reported that Idrīs was the first to study books and to investigate the sciences, and that God sent thirty pages down to him. He was the first to sew garments and to wear clothes. God raised him up to a high place.
4. Abu Ma‘shar related a number of absurd stories about him, of which I have related only the truest and most probable. Triumph belongs to God the Exalted!
5. “The second Hermes was a resident of the city of Bābil. He lived in the city of the Chaldeans, which is Bābil, in the time after the Flood, in the days of Naburīzbānī, who was the first to build the city of Bābil after Nimrod, the son of Kush. He exceeded in the arts of medicine and philosophy, he understood the workings of numbers, and his student was Pythagoras the Arithmetician. This Hermes renewed the practice of medicine, philosophy, and mathematics, the arts lost at Bābil in the time of the Flood.” This is what Abu Ma‘shar wrote.
6. This city of the Chaldeans was the city of the philosophers among the Eastern peoples. They were the first to define things and to make laws. They were the philosophers of the sages of the Persians.
7. The third Hermes lived in the city of Egypt, and he lived after the Flood. He is the author of a book called Poisonous Animals. He was both philosopher and physician, skilled in the properties of deadly drugs and toxic animals. He walked about the land, circumambulating it, learning of the foundations of the cities, the character of them, and that of their peoples. He composed a valuable work on the art of alchemy, discoursing on various arts, including the making of glass, the use of precious stones, the making of clay vessels, and other such things.
8. He had a student named Asclepius, who lived in Syria, and about whom there are absurd stories and many more tales besides.
Translation: partially translated by Jason Colavito and partially adapted from the translations of M. Plessner and Kevin van Bladel, with numbering following van Bladel.
2. Abu Ma‘shar said, “This Hermes was the first to ponder celestial events and the movement of the stars, and his grandfather Gayumart taught him to discern the hours of day and night. He was the first to build temples to exalt God therein. He was also the first to study and discuss medicine, and he wrote well-measured poems for his contemporaries about things terrestrial and celestial. It is also said that he was the first to predict the Flood and anticipate that a celestial cataclysm would befall the earth in the form of fire or water. He made his residence in Upper Egypt, and chose it to build pyramids and cities of clay. Fearing the destruction of knowledge and the disappearance of the arts in the Flood, he built the great temples; one is a veritable mountain called the Temple in Akhmim, in which he carved representations of the arts and instruments, including engraved explanations of science, in order to pass them on to those who would come after him, lest he see them disappear from the world.”
3. In the account passed down from the early ancestors, it is reported that Idrīs was the first to study books and to investigate the sciences, and that God sent thirty pages down to him. He was the first to sew garments and to wear clothes. God raised him up to a high place.
4. Abu Ma‘shar related a number of absurd stories about him, of which I have related only the truest and most probable. Triumph belongs to God the Exalted!
5. “The second Hermes was a resident of the city of Bābil. He lived in the city of the Chaldeans, which is Bābil, in the time after the Flood, in the days of Naburīzbānī, who was the first to build the city of Bābil after Nimrod, the son of Kush. He exceeded in the arts of medicine and philosophy, he understood the workings of numbers, and his student was Pythagoras the Arithmetician. This Hermes renewed the practice of medicine, philosophy, and mathematics, the arts lost at Bābil in the time of the Flood.” This is what Abu Ma‘shar wrote.
6. This city of the Chaldeans was the city of the philosophers among the Eastern peoples. They were the first to define things and to make laws. They were the philosophers of the sages of the Persians.
7. The third Hermes lived in the city of Egypt, and he lived after the Flood. He is the author of a book called Poisonous Animals. He was both philosopher and physician, skilled in the properties of deadly drugs and toxic animals. He walked about the land, circumambulating it, learning of the foundations of the cities, the character of them, and that of their peoples. He composed a valuable work on the art of alchemy, discoursing on various arts, including the making of glass, the use of precious stones, the making of clay vessels, and other such things.
8. He had a student named Asclepius, who lived in Syria, and about whom there are absurd stories and many more tales besides.
Translation: partially translated by Jason Colavito and partially adapted from the translations of M. Plessner and Kevin van Bladel, with numbering following van Bladel.
Al-Ma‘sudi, Meadows of Gold (c. 947-956 CE), 68
The astronomer Abū Ma‘shar, in his book entitled Kitāb al-Ulūf (Book of Thousands), speaks of the temples and the great monuments which had been constructed around the whole world in each period of one thousand years. His pupil, Al-Maziar, treats of the same subject in the excerpts he published from the aforementioned work. Finally, other writers who wrote before or after these two scholars have described the principal buildings and the wonders of the world. We will say nothing here of the great wall of Gog and Magog, whose construction has given rise to as many discussions as Iram of the Pillars, of which we spoke a moment ago. We will not speak either of the pyramids of Egypt nor of the inscriptions engraved there, nor of the berba erected in the Saīd and other provinces of Egypt, or the city of the Eagle and the stories that relate to this city, located in the Oases, on the western side and in Abyssinia. We will not talk about the column of the country of Ād, from the top of which water gushed forth during one season of the year, nor will we talk of the ants that are as big as wolves or dogs, nor the country of gold, located behind Sijilmasa, in the Maghreb. In this country, on the other side of a great river, lives a tribe which trades without showing itself or communicating with foreign merchants. These merchants deposit their goods and retire; the next day they find, beside each parcel, a certain quantity of gold. If they accept the trade, they take the gold and leave their merchandise; otherwise, they depart without touching the gold; to make them understand that they want a higher price, they leave both gold and merchandise. This kind of exchange is well known in the Maghreb at Sijilmasa; it is from this city that the goods are dispatched, which are deposited on the banks of the great and broad river near which this tribe lives. […] We have already spoken of all this in our Historical Annals, covering the talismans, Bālīnus (Apollonius of Tyana), and other authors.
Translated by Jason Colavito
Translated by Jason Colavito
Murtada ibn al-‘Afif, The History of Egypt (before 1237 CE) Abu Ma‘shar the astrologer, in his Book of Thousands, says that the reason for the building of the Pyramids was the dream which Surid ibn Sahluq saw. He confirms it in his Book of Miraculous Dreams, where he adds that he sent for the priests and soothsayers of his time, and the astrologers, and related to them what he had seen of the descent of the Moon upon Earth in the form of a woman; of the overturning of the Earth with its inhabitants, and of the total eclipse of the Sun; and the dream he had after that: and that the Priests declared to him the coming of the Deluge, whereof mention is made in the Book of the Annals…
Translation by J. Davies (adapted) |
Akhbār al-zamān (c. 1000)
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at-Ta‘alibi, Book of Curious and Entertaining Information (before 1038)
According to Abū Ma‘shar al-Munajim (‘the Astrologer’), the ancient peoples living before the Flood, when they had foreknowledge that some calamity from heaven, such as an inundation or a fire, was about to overwhelm all things living on the earth and growing there, used to build massive stone pyramids in upper Egypt on the hilltops and uplands in order to be secure there from fire and water.
Translated by C. E. Bosworth; attributed to the Book on the Differences of the Canons
Translated by C. E. Bosworth; attributed to the Book on the Differences of the Canons
Al-Biruni, Chronology of Ancient Nations (c. 1030), p. 25f.
It is related, that Tahmurath on receiving the warning of the Deluge—231 years before the Deluge—ordered his people to select a place of good air and soil in his realm. Now they did not find a place that answered better to this description than Ispahan. Thereupon, he ordered all scientific books to be preserved for posterity, and to be buried in a part of that place, least exposed to obnoxious influences. In favour of this report we may state that in our time in Jay, the city of Ispahan, there have been discovered hills, which, on being excavated, disclosed houses, filled with many loads of that tree-bark, with which arrows and shields are covered, and which is called Tuz, bearing inscriptions, of which no one was able to say what they are, and what they mean.
Translation: E. Sachau; attributed to the Book on the Differences of the Canons, which Hermann of Carinthia (see below) identifies as the Thousands
Translation: E. Sachau; attributed to the Book on the Differences of the Canons, which Hermann of Carinthia (see below) identifies as the Thousands
Al-Biruni, Chronology of Ancient Nations (c. 1030), p. 25f
This was the era which ’Abu-Ma‘shar Albalkhi wanted, upon which to base his statements regarding the mean places of the stars in his Canon. Now he supposed that the Deluge had taken place at the conjunction of the stars in the last part of Pisces, and the first part of Aries, and he tried to compute their places for that time. Then he found, that they—all of them—stood in conjunction in the space between the twenty-seventh degree of Pisces, and the end of the first degree of Aries. Further, he supposed that between that time and the epoch of the Æra Alexandri, there is an interval of 2,790 intercalated years 7 months and 26 days. This computation comes near to that of the Christians, being 249 years and 3 months less than the estimate of the astronomers. Now, when he thought that he had well established the computation of this sum according to the method, which he has explained, and when he had arrived at the result, that the duration of those periods, which astronomers call “star-cycles,” was 360,000 years, the beginning of which was to precede the time of the Deluge by 180,000 years, he drew the inconsiderate conclusion, that the Deluge had occurred once in every 180,000 years, and that it would again occur in future at similar intervals.
This man, who is so proud of his ingenuity, had computed these star-cycles only from the motions of the stars, as they had been fixed by the observations of the Persians; but they (the cycles) differ from the cycles, which have been based upon the observations of the Indians, known as the “cycles of Sindhind,” and likewise they differ from the days of Arjabhaz, and the days of Arkand. If anybody would construct such cycles on the basis of the observations of Ptolemy, or of the modern astronomers, he might do so by the help of the well known methods of such a calculation, as in fact many people have done, e.g. Muhammad ben ’Ishak ben ’Ustadh Bundadh Alsarakhsi, ’Abu-al-wafa Muhammad ben Muhammad Albuzajani, and I myself in many of my books, particularly in the Kitab-al-istishhad bikhtilaf al’arsad. In each of these cycles the stars come into conjunction with each other in the first part of Aries once, viz. when they start upon and return from their rotation, however, at different times. If he (’Abu-Ma‘shar) now would maintain, that the stars were created standing at that time in the first part of Aries, or that the conjunction of the stars in that place is identical with the beginning of the world, or with the end of the world, such an assertion would be utterly void of proof, although the matter be within the limits of possibility. But such conclusions can never be admitted, except they rest on an evident argument, or on the report of some one who relates the origines of the world, whose word is relied upon, and regarding whom in the mind (of the reader or hearer) this persuasion is established, that he had received divine inspiration and help. For it is quite possible that these (celestial) bodies were scattered, not united at the time when the Creator designed and created them, they having these motions, by which—as calculation shows—they must meet each other in one point in such a time (as above mentioned). It would be the same, as if we, e.g. supposed a circle, in different separate places of which we put living beings, of whom some move fast, others slowly, each of them, however, being carried on in equal motions—of its peculiar sort of motion—in equal times; further, suppose that we knew their 10 distances and places at a certain time, and the measure of the distance over which each of them travels in one Nychthemeron. If you then ask the mathematician as to the length of time, after which they would meet each other in a certain point, or before which they had met each other in that identical point, no blame attaches to him, if he speaks of billions of years. Nor does it follow from his account that those beings existed at that (past) time (when they met each other), or that they would still exist at that (future) time (when they are to meet again); but this only follows from his account, if it is properly explained, that, if these beings really existed (in the past), or would still exist (in future) in that same condition, the result (as to their conjunctions) could be no other but that one at which he had arrived by calculation. But then the verification of this subject is the task of a science which was not the science of ’Abu-Ma‘shar. Translation: E. Sachau |
Al-Sizjī, Al-Jāmi‘ al-Shāhī (c. 1030), Folios 80b-81a. (British Museum MS Or. 1346)Verily, the generality of the learned among the people of India, and China, and Rūm (the Byzantines), and Fārs, and the people of Babylon, and those who follow them among the peoples are agreed (on the fact) that the seven planets were in conjunction at the first minute of Aries and that they conjoin at the end of Pisces at the end of the world. As for the Hindus, they claim that the planets their apogees and nodes, were in conjunction in the first minute of Aries, and that they conjoin at the last (point) of Pisces at the end of the world, and the years of the world are from the time of the conjunction of the planets at the first minute of Aries until the time of their conjunction at the end of Pisces, it being one and the same place, except that they differ among themselves as to the travel of the planets in the heaven. As for those of one of the regions of India, they claim that the years of the world are 4,320,000,000, they being the partisans (aṣḥāb) of the Sindhind. However, the other group of them, they being the partisans of the years of Arjabhaz, they claim that the years of the world are 4,32[0],000. But the author (ṣāḥib) of the “Book of the Thousands” used the years of the Persians for the cycles and tasyīrāt. However, some of the moderns used the world-years according to the way the partisans of the Sindhind explained them, but we now, in this book, will utilize what the author of the “Book of the Thousands” used. […] Verily the author of the “Book of the Thousands” mentioned the revolutions of the planets in days of the world and the quantity of each of their revolutions in days and hours and minutes. At any rate, the days of the world utilized in this book are [131], 493, 240 (text has 313, 493, 240) that being in solar years 36[0],000 according to a year of three hundred and sixty-five days and fifteen minutes and thirty-two seconds and twenty-four thirds.
Excerpted from the 1963 translation of E. S. Kennedy and B. L. van der Waerden in “The World-Year of the Persians,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 83, no. 3. The complete passage, which the authors translate, extensively describes astrological and calendrical calculations. Hermann of Carinthia, De Esentiis (1143 CE)
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Al-Kharaqī, Kitāb Muntahā al-idrāk (twelfth century), chapter 8
The pagan Arabs used the lunar year; they counted their months from the appearance of the crescent, as the Muslims do. Their pilgrimage was fixed on the tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah month: this period did not always fall in the same season. Sometimes it was in summer, other times in winter and in the other two seasons. The reason is the difference between the solar year and the lunar year. They wished for the time of the pilgrimage to fall at the moment when they were conducting their trade, when the air was temperate, and so they chose the very time when the leaves of the trees grow, and where the fodder is abundant to facilitate the journey. At Mecca, and in order that they might trade there, while withdrawing from their act of devotion, the Arabs learned the calendrical intercalation of the Jews, and they called it al-nasī’ or the postponement Yet they did not exactly follow the computation of the Jews: they interposed seven lunar months in nineteen lunar years to have nineteen solar years, while the Arabs interposed twelve lunar months in twenty-four lunar years. They had chosen for this operation a man from the children of Kinanah; he was called al-qalammas; his children, invested with this privilege, called themselves qalāmisa; they were also called nasaa. Qalammas means the great sea. The last of his children who had exercised this function is Abu-Timamah Jenada, son of Auf, son of Umaiah, son of Kala, son of Abbad, son of Qala, son of Hudhaīfah. Qalammas preached to the people gathered at Arafat after the pilgrimage ceremony. It begins when the pilgrimage falls in the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, and it ends in Muharram, without counting it among the twelve months of the year; so that Safar becomes the first month of the year and Muharram the last; it then takes the place of Dhu al-Hijjah, and one celebrates the pilgrimage two years in a row. The third year, after the pilgrimage, the qalammas harangues the people, and it ends with Safar, which he had made the first month of the two previous years. The month of Rabi thus becomes the first month of the third and fourth years; so that the pilgrimage falls for these two years in the month of Safar, which becomes the last of their months. The Qalammas continues this work every two years, until Dhu al-Hijjah falls, in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth years, as the first month of the year, which bears the name of Muharram. The pilgrimage falls, in these two years, in the month of Dhu al-Qidah, which is the last. Then, in the twenty-fifth year, Muharram becomes again the first month, the pilgrimage falls again in Dhu al-Hijjah, and the tour starts again in the same way. The Arabs counted twenty-five months every two years.
The year of the Hegira was the sixteenth year of the last period. That year began with Sha’ban and ended with Rajab; and it was during this last month that the pilgrimage took place; because the Arabs observed that. The twenty-third year of this period began with Dhu al-Hijjah; it was the year 8 of the Hegira, and it was this year that the Mecca was taken by the Muslims on the 13th or 17th of the month of Ramadhan. The prophet did not make the pilgrimage this year, because he fell in Dhu al-Qidah; but in the twenty-fifth year, tenth of the hegira, Muharram becoming again the first month, the legislator accomplished his pilgrimage on the tenth of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, according to the order of the names of the months. This pilgrimage was named the farewell pilgrimage. The prophet harangued the people and commanded of them what God wanted. He says in this harangue: The time is again as it was at the creation of the heavens and the earth, meaning that the names of the months are again as they were at the beginning of time. He forbade them to use the nasi in their year. By this, their years and their months have become, until our days, transient across the four seasons, namely: spring, summer, autumn and winter. This is what we have copied from the Kitāb al-Ulūf, according to the relation of Abu-Ma‘shar.
Abu Ma‘shar adds in the same work that, according to some narrators, the pagan Arabs interposed 9 lunar months in 21 lunar years; they had their sights on the difference of ten days, twenty-one hours, and a fifth part of one hour, which exists between their year and the solar year, to add to their year a whole month, every time the difference accumulated up to a whole month; however, they operated according to the consideration that this difference was only 10 days and 20 hours: their months consequently remained fixed in the seasons, always indicating the same epochs in the year, until the prophet made his farewell pilgrimage. Then the meanings of their names became inapplicable; for these names derived (in the origin) from the circumstances relating to the epochs of those months which, becoming mobile, could no longer match the same circumstances. The first month is Muharram, which means sacred; it was so named, because it is one of the four sacred months among the Arabs. These four months, one of which is isolated, and the other three consecutive, are Dhu al-Qidah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram, and Rajab. War was forbidden during these four months; no one was allowed to raise arms against anyone, even for the murderer of his parents. Safar (which means yellow, according to this author) was so named, because a disease that dulled the complexion hit the Arabs at this time of the year. Rabi’ al-awwal and Rabi’ al-Thani (which means spring) were so named, because they arrived in autumn and the Arabs called autumn spring. As for the Jumada al-awwal and Jumada al-Thani (congealed), they were so named, because they came in winter, when the water freezes. Rajab (abstinence, according to this author) was so named, because the Arabs said this month: irjibū, that is to say, refrain from making war. Sha‘ban (dispersion) was so named, because the tribes dispersed in that month to fetch water and to make incursions. Ramadan (great heat) was so named, because it melted when the heat began and the earth warmed. Shawwal (departure or mating), was thus named, because the Arabs said shūlū, meaning to leave; or because it was the time of camel mating; this is the reason why the Arabs did not allow marriage at that time. As for Dhu al-Qidah (rest), it was so named because the Arabs, in that month, were resting from the fatigues of war; Dhu al-Hijjah (pilgrimage), because it was the month of pilgrimage.
The months were thus divided according to the four seasons; their names derived from the circumstances peculiar to each of them. The Arabs began with autumn; they called it spring. Then came winter and spring; spring was called summer; some called it second spring. Summer was called qaidh (harsh summer).
When the nasī’ was abolished, the months could not fall in the same epochs in the seasons; their names alone remained in use in Islam.
Translated by Jason Colavito from the French of Mahmoud Effendi
The year of the Hegira was the sixteenth year of the last period. That year began with Sha’ban and ended with Rajab; and it was during this last month that the pilgrimage took place; because the Arabs observed that. The twenty-third year of this period began with Dhu al-Hijjah; it was the year 8 of the Hegira, and it was this year that the Mecca was taken by the Muslims on the 13th or 17th of the month of Ramadhan. The prophet did not make the pilgrimage this year, because he fell in Dhu al-Qidah; but in the twenty-fifth year, tenth of the hegira, Muharram becoming again the first month, the legislator accomplished his pilgrimage on the tenth of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, according to the order of the names of the months. This pilgrimage was named the farewell pilgrimage. The prophet harangued the people and commanded of them what God wanted. He says in this harangue: The time is again as it was at the creation of the heavens and the earth, meaning that the names of the months are again as they were at the beginning of time. He forbade them to use the nasi in their year. By this, their years and their months have become, until our days, transient across the four seasons, namely: spring, summer, autumn and winter. This is what we have copied from the Kitāb al-Ulūf, according to the relation of Abu-Ma‘shar.
Abu Ma‘shar adds in the same work that, according to some narrators, the pagan Arabs interposed 9 lunar months in 21 lunar years; they had their sights on the difference of ten days, twenty-one hours, and a fifth part of one hour, which exists between their year and the solar year, to add to their year a whole month, every time the difference accumulated up to a whole month; however, they operated according to the consideration that this difference was only 10 days and 20 hours: their months consequently remained fixed in the seasons, always indicating the same epochs in the year, until the prophet made his farewell pilgrimage. Then the meanings of their names became inapplicable; for these names derived (in the origin) from the circumstances relating to the epochs of those months which, becoming mobile, could no longer match the same circumstances. The first month is Muharram, which means sacred; it was so named, because it is one of the four sacred months among the Arabs. These four months, one of which is isolated, and the other three consecutive, are Dhu al-Qidah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram, and Rajab. War was forbidden during these four months; no one was allowed to raise arms against anyone, even for the murderer of his parents. Safar (which means yellow, according to this author) was so named, because a disease that dulled the complexion hit the Arabs at this time of the year. Rabi’ al-awwal and Rabi’ al-Thani (which means spring) were so named, because they arrived in autumn and the Arabs called autumn spring. As for the Jumada al-awwal and Jumada al-Thani (congealed), they were so named, because they came in winter, when the water freezes. Rajab (abstinence, according to this author) was so named, because the Arabs said this month: irjibū, that is to say, refrain from making war. Sha‘ban (dispersion) was so named, because the tribes dispersed in that month to fetch water and to make incursions. Ramadan (great heat) was so named, because it melted when the heat began and the earth warmed. Shawwal (departure or mating), was thus named, because the Arabs said shūlū, meaning to leave; or because it was the time of camel mating; this is the reason why the Arabs did not allow marriage at that time. As for Dhu al-Qidah (rest), it was so named because the Arabs, in that month, were resting from the fatigues of war; Dhu al-Hijjah (pilgrimage), because it was the month of pilgrimage.
The months were thus divided according to the four seasons; their names derived from the circumstances peculiar to each of them. The Arabs began with autumn; they called it spring. Then came winter and spring; spring was called summer; some called it second spring. Summer was called qaidh (harsh summer).
When the nasī’ was abolished, the months could not fall in the same epochs in the seasons; their names alone remained in use in Islam.
Translated by Jason Colavito from the French of Mahmoud Effendi
