Anuj MISRA (MPIWG)

Hamid Bohloul (MPIWG)

This talk investigates the nativity books commissioned by Timurid rulers, introducing their authors, surviving manuscripts, and their popularity in their own time. Particular attention will be given to two families of astrologers who served at the Timurid courts. Their role in the production of nativity books, as well as their other scholarly activities, will be explored through both the manuscripts and additional contemporary sources.

Eva Orthmann (University of Göttingen)

The k. ad-Daur al-ʿuṭāridī has originally been written by al-Ḥasan b. Jaʿfar al-Anṣārī in the year 377/987–88. Its main goal is to announce the end of the ʿAbbasid dynasty for the year 392. His main argument is mundane astrology, and he therefore includes a series of altogether 30 horoscopes in his text. Many of these horoscopes are known from other texts, like the astrological history of Masha’allah or from as-Sijzī. Some horoscopes have been added, maybe, from unknown sources. Interestingly, the text has been reworked twice: once in the time of the Fatimid ruler al-Ḥākim by a certain Abū Turāb Ḥaidara b. Muḥammad, and then again later in Aleppo in 641/1243. 

The lecture will introduce the text and its different layers. It will specifically look at the horoscopes, both from the perspective of their astronomical data and the prognostications related to them. The later additions and the reworking of the text will also be considered.

Stefan Kamola (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

In this presentation, I will examine the approach taken by the otherwise unknown Irānshāh Nīshāpūrī to provide horoscopes for Chinggis Khan and for the unnamed main subject of his astrological history, Qirānat-i Irānshāhī. For Chinggis Khan, Irānshāh begins with an assumption about the celestial circumstances of birth and induces a date that actually aligns well with modern scholarship on the life of Chinggis Khan. For the unnamed subject, he provides an authentic birth horoscope for a figure who he simply calls ṣāḥib-i qirān, possibly the earliest systematic application of that title to a historical figure. I will explore Irānshāh’s motives in writing his work and propose strategies we might deploy for getting more information about Irānshāh and the context of his writing. I also ask about Irānshāh’s position within the science of astrology, as a previously unrecognised adherent to the cyclical historical model of Abū Maʿshar’s lost Kitāb al-ulūf.

Catering

A. Tunç Şen (Columbia University)

This presentation examines the extant works of Khitabi, also known as Sayyid Munajjim, a Persian émigré and prominent astral expert at the Ottoman court in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Central to the discussion is the birth horoscope he prepared for Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–1446; 1451–1481), a voluminous text that offers insight into the courtly uses of astrology, the sultan’s cultivated image, and the intellectual roles and legacies of astral experts in the early modern Ottoman world. Through a close reading of the horoscope alongside Sayyid Munajjim’s other surviving writings, the paper explores the scientific content and rhetorical strategies of his astral knowledge. It situates his work within the broader context of Persianate astronomical and astrological traditions and highlights the ways in which he adapted his expertise to Ottoman political and cultural expectations. This analysis sheds light on the intellectual hybridity of the Ottoman court and the strategic mobility of learned figures like Sayyid Munajjim, whose career illustrates the dynamic transmission of knowledge across regional and imperial boundaries.

Luís Ribeiro (CIUHCT, Lisbon); Hamid Bohloul (MPIWG)

In this hands-on session, we will examine in detail the nativity book composed by Muʿin al-Dīn al-Kāshī for Prince Ulugh Beg’s son, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, presenting selected passages of its Persian text alongside English translations. Together, we will reconstruct the prince’s birth horoscope using al-Ṭūsī’s Zīj-i Īlkhānī and apply an astrolabe for domification. Through these exercises, participants will gain a clearer sense of how Islamicate astrologers worked with astronomical tables, the arithmetical methods they employed, and the practical challenges they faced when casting a horoscope.

Hamid Bohloul (MPIWG)

In this session, participants will engage with selected passages from Persian nativity books, presented with English translations. We will read the texts together and open the floor for collective discussion.

Evrim Binbaş (University of Bonn)

In Timurid and Turkmen studies the concept of “princely house” was developed by such scholars as Jean Aubin to explain the intellectual and political posture of a princely figure. According to this idea, political ambitions of a prince underpinned the direction of his (always his) patronage. In my presentation I will test this idea with references to the horoscopes of the Timurid princes Iskandar b. ʿUmar Shaykh (d. 1415), Rustam b. ʿUmar Shaykh (d. ca. 14234), Baysunghur b. Shahrukh (d. 1434) and the Aqqoyunlu ruler Yaʿqub b. Uzun Hasan (d. 1490) and explore the political incentives behind the composition of these texts.

Richard Kremer (Dartmouth College)

In the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy described two types of astrological prognostication, for particular persons and for entire groups, races, cities or countries. The latter type, general astrology, treated large phenomena, such as famine, plague, religion, drought, or warfare, usually on the time-scale of a year, with predictions based on the “revolution of the year” or a horoscope cast for the moment of the spring equinox.  Nearly 100 annual prognostications (also called practica) are preserved in fifteenth-century Latin sources. Another 500 editions of annual prognostications, both Latin and vernacular, were printed before 1501 (incunabula). In this talk, I will introduce the genre, its astronomical and astrological content, its authors and their social/political/epistemic contexts, and its use of the new printing technology to combine images and text for a broad reading public in late medieval Europe. Indeed, we might argue that, after the Bible, the annual prognostication was the most widely read literature across Europe in the early decades of printing.

Catering

Florence Somer (Paris Observatory) [online]

This contribution investigates the specific transmission of Abū Maʿshar al-Balkhī’s (d. 886 CE) theories and practices of nativity astrology (ʿilm al-mawālīd) to the Indian subcontinent during the 16th and 17th centuries under the Mughal Empire. It argues that this transmission was driven by the Mughal court's acute interest in personal legitimacy and political prophecy, leading to the commissioning of Persian-language texts that synthesized Abū Maʿshar's Hellenistic-Persian framework with existing Indian astrological traditions (Jyotiṣa).

The primary vector for this transmission was the translation of and commentary on Abū Maʿshar's key works, the Kitāb al-Mawālīd (The Book of Nativities), a dedicated treatise on genethlialogy. Mughal policy facilitated this process, particularly under Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), by establishing translation bureaus (maktabkhāna) to render foundational Arabic and Sanskrit knowledge into Persian.

Several books and treaties were produced as a result of this synthesis, among them some Persian translation and commentaries of the Kitāb al-Mawālīd, to make techniques for calculating the length of life (aydāḥ al-‘umr), delineating character from planetary placements, and predicting future periods (firdār) accessible to Mughal courtiers and scholars.

Hybrid Syntheses (Majmū‘a) were also produced as original compositions that attempted a systematic fusion. An example is the Iqbal Nāma-i-Jahāngīrī (the Book of Fortune of Jahāngīr), a text that incorporates Abū Maʿshar's methods for interpreting natal charts within a Perso-Indian framework. This technical synthesis is blending the Hellenistic system of twelve zodiac signs and seven planets with concepts from Jyotiṣa, such as the nine grahas and the importance of the moon in the nakṣatras. In practice, it uses these hybrid methods to cast and interpret the horoscopes of Mughal royalty and nobility, thereby providing astrological justification for their rule and destiny.

Abū Maʿshar's nativity astrology was not a passive adoption but an active, creative process of intellectual hybridization. The books produced served a political and cultural function as they provided the Mughal elite with a sophisticated, "scientific" tool for self-understanding and legitimization, rooted in both Islamic and Indian cosmopolitical traditions.

Jeffrey Kotyk (MPIWG)

Horoscopy was introduced into China around the year 800 from diverse Indian and Iranian sources, but this was not a truly faithful transmission, since it was necessary to convert the system for use in Chinese astronomy, which differs from Indian and Greek models. Nevertheless, the extant evidence reveals that East Asian horoscopy (preserved in China and Japan) has many recognizable Hellenistic elements, such as triplicity rulers, domicile rulers, lots (Arabic parts), and aspects.

Luís Ribeiro (CIUHCT, Lisbon)

The influence of the Arabic astrological tradition on European practice is undeniable. The first astrological texts to circulate in Europe originated from translations of Arabic works, and later, these translations became the first printed books on astrology. However, the Arabic tradition gradually fell out of favour from the late fifteenth century onward. The Classical and Ptolemaic traditions became more appealing to some who regarded them as purer and more rational than the Islamicate heritage. This shift had implications for astrology since most of its core concepts were rooted in the Islamicate corpus. As this trend towards the rationalisation of astrology developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, references to the “foolishness of the Arabs” became common in both defences and critiques of astrology. Nevertheless, this departure from the Arabic tradition was never as clear-cut as it is sometimes portrayed. Authors such as Mashala, Alcabitius, Albumasar, Aomar, and others continued to be frequently cited sources in Latin and vernacular European texts, as well as in practical examples. This paper explores the apparent conflict within the context of astrological practice.