Masha'allah ibn Atharī (c.740–815 AD) was an eighth-century Persian Jewish[1] astrologer and astronomer from the city of Basra (now located in modern day Iraq) who became the leading astrologer of the late 8th century.[2] The Arabic phrase ma sha`a allah indicates acceptance of what God has ordained in terms of good or ill fortune that may befall a believer. His real name was probably Manasseh or Jethro, and Latin translators named him Messahala (with many variants, as Messahalla, Messala, Macellama, Macelarma, Messahalah). The crater Messala on the Moon is named after him. Science historian Donald Hill writes that Mashallah was originally from Khorasan.[3]
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As a young man he participated in the founding of Baghdad in 762 by working with a group of astrologers led by Naubakht the Persian to pick an electional horoscope for the founding of the city. He wrote over twenty works on astrology, which became authoritative in later centuries at first in the Middle East, and then in the West when horoscopic astrology was transmitted back to Europe beginning in the 12th century.
Mashallah wrote works on Astral sympathies, otherwise known as astrology. Of his over 20 works, few remain. Only one of his writings is still extant in its original Arabic,[4] but there are many medieval Latin,[5] Byzantine Greek[6][7] and Hebrew translations. One of his most popular books in the Middle Ages was the De scientia motus orbis, translated by Gherardo Cremonese (Gerard of Cremona). Mashallah's treatise De mercibus (On Prices) is the oldest extant scientific work in Arabic.[8]
He also wrote treatises on Astrolabes (p 10). The De scientia motus orbis is probably the treatise called in Arabic "the twenty-seventh," printed in Nuremberg in 1501, 1549. The second edition, De elementis et orbibus coelestibus, contains 27 chapters. The De compositione et utilitate astrolabii was included in Gregor Reisch: Margarita phylosophica (ed. pr., Freiburg, 1503; Suter says the text is included in the Basel edition of 1583). Other astronomical and astrological writings are quoted by Suter and Steinsehneider. An Irish astronomical tract also exists based in part on a medieval Latin version. Edited with preface, translation, and glossary, by Afaula Power (Irish Texts Society, vol. 14, 194 p., 1914). The notable 12th century scholar and astrologer Abraham ibn Ezra translated two of Mashallah's astrological treatises into Hebrew: She'elot and Ḳadrut (Steinschneider, "Hebr. Uebers." pp. 600–603). Many of Mashallah's astrologigal treatises were translated out of Latin into English in 2008 and are available in The Works of Sahl and Masha'allah by Benjamin N. Dykes.[9] On Reception, is also available in an English translation by Robert Hand[10] from the Latin edition by Joachim Heller of Nuremberg in 1549.