Small folio. [26], 586 pp., [2], Latin text, woodcut device on title and final leaf, woodcut headpieces, initials and diagrams, later vellum, title gilt on raised spine, red speckled edges, some light browning and spotting, occasional minor staining, joints starting to split, Provenance: Camm L. Scanz. N.3 (inscription on title), from the Giancarlo Library of Scientific Books, ex Officina Henricpetrina, Basileae, [1571].

Synopsis

Ali ibn Abi al Rijal (also known as Haly or Hali, and by the Latinized versions of his name, Haly Albohazen and Haly Abenragel) was an Arab astrologer and astronomer at the court of the Zirid ruler of Qayrawan, al-Muizz ibn Badis, and held high office in his administration during the first half of the eleventh century. His principal surviving work, “Kitab al-Bari’ fi Ahkam al-Nujum” , became one of the most popular astrological compendiums in East and West. This volume, a later edition of De Judiciis Astrorum, a Latin translation of the Old Castilian manuscript first published in Venice in 1485, deals in eight books with interrogations, nativities, catarchic astrology, astrological history and astrological meteorology; its sources include a vast array of authorities, the citations from it make it one of an historian’s most valuable “. D. Pingree in “Religion, learning and science in the Abbasid period “. pp. 299-300.