Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“Natural” Disasters in the Arabic Astro-meteorological Malḥama Handbooks

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Historical Disaster Experiences

Abstract

This article examines predictions of the “natural” disasters conveyed in the malḥama astro-meteorological handbooks. It analyzes their structure, content, and origin on the basis of a particular treatise of this genre compiled by Ibn Zunbul , a sixteenth-century Egypt ian author. It shows that this genre is a relic of Assyrian-Babylon ian “omina” and the Hermetic tradition of Late Antiquity. Furthermore, it reveals that the text had become incorporated into Arabic tradition, adapting the text’s original character to specific cultural requirements. That is, it absorbed, reflected, and modified interpretations of natural phenomena through a transfer of transcultural knowledge . In this respect, Arab authors reinterpreted catastrophes written down in pre-Islamic ancient cultures , adding new understandings gleaned from cross-cultural interactions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    There are different views about the origin and meaning of this term in the early Arabic sources. According to Daniel Varisco, anwāʾ (singular nawʾ) is a system which the Arabs in pre-Islamic times used to estimate the passage of time and to predict the state of the weather (rain , wind, heat and cold) from the setting or rising of certain constellations. Some Muslim scholars identified anwāʾ with the twenty-eight lunar phases (manāzil al-qamar); others linked it with the so-called “system of rain invocation.” Daniel Varisco, “The Origin of the anwāʾ in Arab Tradition,” Studia Islamica 74 (1991): 5–6, 14, 24; Charles Pellat, “Anwāʾ,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 1: 523–524. See also the definition and short description of anwāʾ in the chapter “Rain” in al-Qalqashandī, Kitāb Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, (al-Qāhira: Maṭbaʿa al-amīrīya, 1331/1913), 2:170–174. Predictions on the basis of anwāʾ can also be found in the agricultural almanac s (taqwīm, “weather calendar”). See Daniel Varisco, “A Rasulid Agricultural Almanac for 808/1405-6,” New Arabia n Studies 1 (1993): 108–123; Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn li-l-Shaykh Aḥmad Ibn Zunbul al-Maḥallī [copied in 1100/1688, 102 fols.], Ms. Pet 668 (5889), fols. 63a–88a, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. The list of anwāʾ literature can be found in Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 339–370.

  2. 2.

    Astro-meteorolog y predicts events on earth on the basis of astrolog ical, climatic, and geophysical phenomena. It should not be confused with astronomical meteorology, which mainly forecasts the weather without any reference to its effects on human beings and the environment, see Sezgin, Geschichte, 306 ff.; Stuart Jenks, “Astrometeorology in the Middle Ages ,” Isis 74, no. 2 (June 1983): 185. To avoid confusion, see also the development of the semantic distinction between astronomy and astrology, which were not always strictly differentiated in the Middle Ages. According to one of the definitions, astronomy (ʿilm al-hayʾa, ʿilm al-falak, ʿilm al-nujūm) teaches—generally speaking—the position and the motion of heavenly bodies, acquired through observations and mathematical calculations, whereas astrology (Ṣināʿat aḥkām al-nujūm) bases the prediction of future events on the position and motion of heavenly bodies. Shlomo Pines, “The Semantic Distinction between the Terms Astronomy and Astrology according to al-Bīrūnī ,” Isis 55, no. 3 (1964): 345.

  3. 3.

    Sezgin, Geschichte, 306.

  4. 4.

    Emilie Savage-Smith, introduction to Magic and Divination in Early Islam: The Formation of the Classical Islamic World, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2004), xxx–xxxii.

  5. 5.

    In this article, I use “natural hazards ” and “natural disasters ” synonymously. See their distinction presented on the basis of the equivalent German terms “Naturgefahr” and “Naturkatastrophen” in Dieter Groh, Michael Kempe, and Franz Mauelshagen, “Einleitung: Naturkatastrophen—wahrgenommen, gedeutet, dargestellt,” in Naturkatastrophen: Beiträge zu ihrer Deutung, Wahrnehmung und Darstellung in Text und Bild von der Antike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Dieter Groh et al. (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2003), 14–15.

  6. 6.

    Besides malḥama, this manuscript contains chapters on global and local topography, astronomy, history of Coptic feasts, and other information. Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 38b–88b.

  7. 7.

    For more about this author and his lifetime see Ibn Zunbul, al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn, fols. 79a–b; Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur (Berlin: Verlag von Emil Felber, 1902), 2:54; Benjamin Lellouch, “Ibn Zunbul, un Égyptien face à l’universalisme Ottoman (seizième siècle),” in Studia Islamica 79 (1994): 143–155; Robert Irwin, “Ibn Zunbul and the Romance of History,” in Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam: Muslim Horizons, ed. Julia Bray (London : Routledge, 2006), 3–15.

  8. 8.

    Although some malḥama manuscripts explicitly refer to a prominent Yemenite author of the Umayyad period, Wahb Ibn Munabbih (d. ca. 114 AH/732 CE), as the earliest known narrator to compile an astro-meteorolog ical malḥama, according to Julius Ruska, the greater part of the Arabic malḥama originated during the tenth or eleventh century CE, see Julius Ruska, Tabula Smaragdina: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Hermetischen Literatur (Heidelberg : Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1926), 67.

  9. 9.

    Taufīq Fahd, “Malḥama ,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 6: 247.

  10. 10.

    See also the Old Testament, 1 Sm 18:17.

  11. 11.

    Haggai Ben-Shammai, “Saadia’s Introduction to Daniel: Prophetic Calculation of the End of Days vs. Astrolog ical and Magical Speculation,” in Aleph 4 (2004): 16.

  12. 12.

    Ibn Manẓūr, “Malḥama ,” in Lisān al-ʿarab, (Beirut : Dār lisān al-ʿarab, 1988), 3352.

  13. 13.

    Hans Wehr, “Malḥama ,” in A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J. Milton Cowan (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrssowitz, 1980), 861.

  14. 14.

    Ibn al-Dawādārī, “Kanz al-durar wa jāmiʿ al-ghurar,” in al-Qāhira: al-Maʿhad al-almānī li-l-āthār, ed. Ulrich Haarmann (1971), 8:275; Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (London : Routledge, 1958), 2:219–220.

  15. 15.

    Ben-Shammai, “Saadia’s Introduction to Daniel,” 16.

  16. 16.

    See more about the origin of this genre in Kristine Chalyan-Daffner, “Natural Disasters in Mamlūk Egypt (1250–1517): Perceptions, Interpretations, and Human Responses” (PhD diss., Heidelberg University, 2013) [urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-177116].

  17. 17.

    See Fahd, “Malḥama ,” 247.

  18. 18.

    Malḥama in this context is also a collective name of seven classical Arabic poems. See Michael Kreutz, “Sulaymān al-Bustānīs Arabische Ilias: Ein Beispiel für arabischen Philhellenismus im ausgehenden Osmanischen Reich,” Die Welt des Islams 44, no. 2 (2004): 162.

  19. 19.

    See more about different types of apocalyptic literature in Islam in David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton: The Darwin Press, 2002), 20–21, 333–385. A number of such texts attributed to the great mystic Ibn al-ʿArabī (638 AH/1240 CE) were annotated and circulated up until the seventeenth century CE, see Fahd, “Malḥama ,” 247.

  20. 20.

    This kind of malḥama was popular especially among the followers of the Shīʿa, see Barbara Langner, Untersuchungen zur historischen Volkskunde Ägyptens nach mamlukischen Quellen, (Berlin: Klaus Schwartz, 1983), 92; See more about al-Mahdī in al-Nuwayrī, Nihāya al-arab fī funūn al-adab (al-Qāhira: Maṭābiʿ Kūstātsūmās wa shirkāh, 1963), 14: 273–274; Wilferd Madelung, “al-Mahdī,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 5: 1230–1238.

  21. 21.

    George Saliba, “The Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society,” in Savage-Smith, Magic and Divination in Early Islam, 353.

  22. 22.

    Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, 2:209.

  23. 23.

    Al-Bīrūnī, The Chronology of Ancient Nations: An English Version of the Arabic Text of the Athâr-ul-Bâkiya of Albîrûnî, or ‘Vestiges of the past,’ Collected and Reduced to Writing by the Author in A.H. 390–1, A.D. 1000, trans. and ed. Eduard Sachau (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1879), 84ff.

  24. 24.

    Saliba, “The Role of the Astrologer ,” 353; Ptolemy , Tetrabiblos, translated by Frank Robbins (Aberdeen: University Press, 1948), 117–121. Jean-Patrice Boudet, “Astrolog y,” in Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia, ed. Thomas Glick et al. (London : Routledge, 2005), 61–62.

  25. 25.

    Savage-Smith, introduction to Magic and Divination in Early Islam, xxxvi–xxxvii.

  26. 26.

    Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, 333–385.

  27. 27.

    Ben-Shammai, “Saadia’s Introduction to Daniel,” 17.

  28. 28.

    Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fol. 40a.

  29. 29.

    AH is the abbreviation for the Hijrī year used in the Islamic Lunar calendar.

  30. 30.

    Qāsim ʿAbduh Qāsim, ʿAṣr salāṭīn al-mamālīk, (al-Qāhira: Dār al-shurūq, 1415/1994), 8; John W. Livingston, “Science and the Occult in the Thinking of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,” Journal of the American Oriental Study 112, no. 4 (October–December 1992): 599–600.

  31. 31.

    See Chalyan-Daffner , Natural Disasters in Mamlūk Egypt (1250–1517), 562–607.

  32. 32.

    Qāsim, “ʿAṣr salāṭīn al-mamālīk,” 159.

  33. 33.

    See Chalyan-Daffner, Natural Disasters in Mamlūk Egypt (1250–1517), 317ff.

  34. 34.

    See, for example, the following manuscripts in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Oriental Department, listed in W. Ahlwardt, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin: Verzeichnis der arabischen Handschriften, (Berlin: A. Asher & C., 1893), 272–308: Ms. Spr. 1936 (5912), fols. 1–63; Ms. Mq. 657 (5913); Ms. Mf. 39,6 (5914), fols. 85–96; Ms. Mo. 197,2 fol. 4–30a; Ms. We. 1752 (5902), fols. 40–61; Ms. Mo. 197 (5903), fol. 1–3; Ms. Mq. 98 (5904), fols. 14b–15a; Ms. Mo. 198 (5915), fols. 42a ff.; Ms. Mq. 466; Spr. 1936,3; Ms. We 1155 (5916), fols. 1–57. Some of the manuscripts are also located in the Egyptian National Library. See the catalogue by David King, Fihris al-makhṭūṭāt al-ʿilmīya al-maḥfūẓa bi-dār al-kutub al-miṣrīya (al-Qāhira, 1986), 628–649; David King, A Survey of the Scientific Manuscripts in the Egypt ian National Library, ed. The American Research Centre in Egypt (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1986), 27–28: Ms. 1156, DM 4, fols. 45v–87v [ca 800 AH]; Ms. K 3852, 68 fols. [ca. 1100 AH]; Ms. DM 575, 48 fols. [ca. 1150 AH]; Ms. DḤ 16,2, fols. 73v–117v [ca. 1133 AH]. More of the same genre is preserved in the National Library of France : Ms. Arabe 2578 (1171), fols. 1–41; Ms. Arabe 2579 (983), fols. 1–14; Ms. Arabe 4580,6 (1921), 86 fols.; Ms. Arab 2633 (1109).

  35. 35.

    Francis E. Peters, “Hermes and Harran: The Roots of Arabic-Islamic Occultism,” in Savage-Smith, Magic and Divination in Early Islam, 58; David Pingree , The Thousands of Abū Maʿshar (London: The Warburg Institute of University of London , 1968), 15–18; Charles Burnett, “The Legend of the Three Hermes and Abū Maʿshar’s Kitāb al-Ulūf in the Latin Middle Ages ,” in Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Texts and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds, es. Charles Burnett (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 231; Sezgin, Geschichte, 50–58. Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972) 289–293.

  36. 36.

    Martin Plessner, “Hermes Trismegistus and Arab Science,” Studia Islamica 2 (1954): 51–52; al-Dimashqī, Kitāb nukhba al-dahr fī ʿajāʾib al-barr wa al-baḥr, (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1923), 24, 33–34; al-ʿUmarī, Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār (Abū Ẓabī: al-Majmaʿ al-thaqāfī, 2003) 1: 104–105.

  37. 37.

    The Arabic astrolog ical Hermetica and its forerunners should not be confused with the Corpus Hermeticum, which has theological and philosophical content. See the latter in Das Corpus Hermeticum Deutsch, vol. 1, Die griechischen Traktate und der lateinische ‘Asclepius’, ed. Jens Holzhausen, Clavis pansophiae 7 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1997).

  38. 38.

    Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Ms. Mf. 39 (5873), fols.1–38; Egypt ian National Library, Ms. DḤ 16,2, fols. 73r–117r; Ms. DM 1156,4, fols. 45–87; Ms. DM 994, 16 fols.; Sezgin, Geschichte, 41–48, 64. Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 282–285.

  39. 39.

    See more about Daniel in al-Nuwayrī, Nihāya al-arab fī funūn al-adab, 14:158–163.

  40. 40.

    Georges Vajda, “Dānīyāl’,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 2 2: 112–113; Ze’ew Ben-Haim et al., “Daniel’,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007), 5:417–425.

  41. 41.

    Malḥama Dānīyāl also belongs to the Hermetic literature to be found in numerous manuscripts: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin: Ms. Spr. 1936 (5912), fols. 1–63; National Library of France : Ms. Arabe 2593,3, Ms. Arabe 2633; Egypt ian National Library: Ms. DM 1156,4, fols. 45–87; Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 293; Sezgin, Geschichte, 312–317; Giuseppe Furlani, “Eine Sammlung astrologischer Abhandlungen in arabischer Sprache,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Verwandte Gebiete 33 (1921), 157–168; Taufīq Fahd, La divination Arabe. Études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu native de l’Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 408–412.

  42. 42.

    Wilhelm Gundel und Hans Georg Gundel, Astrologumena: Die astrologische Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1966), 14.

  43. 43.

    Malḥama handbooks were copied anonymously because their compilers probably feared critisim from religious scholars who found any kind of predictions antithetical to the message of the Qur’ān. On the other hand, by including the names of well-known personalities, like Aristotle or Alexander the Great , they caught readers’ interest.

  44. 44.

    Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 289.

  45. 45.

    Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʿAbbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries) (London : Routlege, 1998); Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, trans. Emile and Jenny Marmorstein (London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975).

  46. 46.

    Jenks, “Astrometeorology,” 185–210.

  47. 47.

    David King, “The Astronomy of the Mamluks,” Isis 74, no. 4 (December 1983): 551; Yahya Michot, “Ibn Taymiyya on Astrolog y Annotated Translation of Three Fatwas,” Journal of Islamic Studies 11, no. 2 (2000): 160; Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, 2:201; John Livingston, “Science and the Occut in the Thinking of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,” Journal of American Oriental Society 112, no. 4 (October–December 1992): 598.

  48. 48.

    Langner, Untersuchungen zur historischen Volkskunde Ägyptens, 84–85. See the Qurʾānic sura 27:66 “None in the heavens or on earth knows the hidden reality [of anything that exists: none knows it] save God” in The Message of the Qurʾān, trans. and expl. Muhammad Asad (Gibraltar: Dār al-Andalus, 1980), 585.

  49. 49.

    Kitāb alf layla wa layla, (Night 455), William Macnaghten (ed.), (Calcutta : W. Thacker and Co. St. Andrew's Library, 1839) 2:523. See the Qurʾānic sura 31:34 “Verily, with God alone rests the knowledge of when the Last Hour will come; and He [it is who] sends down rain ; and He [alone] knows what is in the wombs: whereas no one knows what he will reap tomorrow, and no one knows in what land he will die. Verily, God [alone] is all-knowing, all-aware” in The Message of the Qurʾān, 632.

  50. 50.

    Fahd, La divination Arabe, 39–90.

  51. 51.

    Langern, Untersuchungen zur historischen Volkskunde Ägyptens, 3–4.

  52. 52.

    Walter Joseph Fischel, Ibn Khaldūn in Egypt : His Public Functions and His Historical Research, 1382–1406; A Study in Islamic Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).

  53. 53.

    Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, 2:200.

  54. 54.

    Kitāb alf layla, 2:523–524.

  55. 55.

    Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī was the chief Shāfiʿī judge, appointed by Sultan Barsbay (r. 825–841 AH/1422–1438 CE). He was considered “the greatest religious scholar of his age.” See Jere Bacharach, “Circassian Mamluk Historians and their Quantitative Economic Data,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 12 (1975): 79; Sami Massoud, The Chronicles and Annalistic Sources of the Early Mamluk Circassian Period (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 53.

  56. 56.

    Al-ʿAsqalānī, Inbāʾ al-ghumr bi-anbāʾ al-ʿumr, ed. Ḥabashī (al-Qāhira: Jumhūrīya Miṣr al-ʿarabīya, 1415/1994), 2:37. The same event is reported in al-Suyūṭī , Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara fī tārīkh Miṣr wa al-Qāhira, ed. Muḥammad Ibrāhīm (Miṣr: Dār iḥyāʾ al-kutub al-ʿarabīya, 1387/1968), 2:308.

  57. 57.

    Al-Maqr īzī was the most famous and the most criticized historian of the Circassian period. He occupied different positions and worked for a short duration as muḥtasib of Cairo. Bacharach, Circassian Mamluk Historians, 77–78; Massoud, The Chronicles and Annalistic Sources, 48–49; Franz Rosenthal, “al-Maḳrīzī,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 6:193–194; Reuven Amitai, “al-Maqr īzī as a Historian of the Early Mamluk Sultanate, or Is al-Maqr̄zī an Unrecognized Historiographical Villain?” Mamlūk Studies Reveiw 7 (2003): 99–118.

  58. 58.

    Al-Maqr īzī, Kitāb al-sulūk li-maʿrifa duwal al-mulūk, ed. Saʿīd ʿĀshūr (al-Qāhira: Maṭbaʿa dār al-kutub, 1972), 4,2: 855.

  59. 59.

    ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ Ibn Khālil was a physician and chronicler of the late Mamlūk period. See ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ, Nayl al-amal fī dhayl al-duwal, ed. ʿUmar Tadmurī (Beirut : al-Maktaba al-ʿaṣrīya 1422/2002), 1,1:23–48; Massoud, The Chronicles and Annalistic Sources, 67–69; Bacharach, “Circassian Mamluk Historians,” 82.

  60. 60.

    ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ, Nayl al-amal, 1,4:296.

  61. 61.

    Ibid., 2,8:19.

  62. 62.

    Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 38b–44b.

  63. 63.

    Cf. the following anonymous manuscripts: St. Petersburg, The National Library of Russia, Samaritan collection, Ms. Фирк. Сам. VII 13, fols. 1–51; The National Library of France , Ms. Arabe 2578, fols. 1–41, Ms. Arabe 4580, fols. 86–102; The Egypt ian National Library, Ms. DM 132, 92 fols, Ms. DM 59,2+3, fols. 1–6, Ms. 994 DM, Ms. Sh 73, 7 fols.; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Ms. Mq. 657 ( 5913), Ms. We. 1155 (5916), fols. 1–57. See further copies in Ahlwardt, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, 5:272–308; King, Fihris al-makhṭūṭāt, 637–640; King, A Survey of the Scientific Manuscripts, 5:27; Fahd, La divination Arabe, 494; Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften, 291.

  64. 64.

    Ibn Zunbul uses different systems for predictions , which I call techniques in this paper.

  65. 65.

    Ibn Zunbul, al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 41a–41b. Predictions are given for the birth of the year in combination with certain zodiac signs and planets .

  66. 66.

    Furlani, "Eine Sammlung astrologischer Abhandlungen,“ 157; Alexander Fodor, Malhamat Daniyal (Budapest: Loránd Eötvös University, 1974), 85.

  67. 67.

    Sirius /Sothis is also a part of the decans . Ernst Zinner, “Die Sternbilder der alten Aegypter,” Isis 16, no. 1 (July 1931): 92ff; Paul Casanova, “De quelques légendes astronomiques arabes considérées dans leurs rapports avec la mythologie égyptienne,” Bulletin de l’institut français d’archéologie orientale 2 (1902): 2–3, 25–34.

  68. 68.

    Paul Kunitzsch, “al-Shiʿrā,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 9: 471–472. See also Quack, in this volume: “Assur will suffer:” Predicting Disaster in Ancient Egypt .

  69. 69.

    Wilhelm Spiegelberg, Die demotischen Papyrus: Catalogue Général des Antiquités Égyptiennes du Musée du Caire (Strassburg: Dumont Schauberg, 1908), 2: 309. See also Quack, in this volume.

  70. 70.

    Georges Hughes, “A Demotic Astrolog ical Text,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 10, no. 4 (October 1951): 258.

  71. 71.

    Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 22.

  72. 72.

    Gundel, Astrologumena, 12. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, 22–24.

  73. 73.

    Gundel, Astrologumena, 49–56, 259. References to similar divinatory texts in Hebrew can be found in Jonas Greenfield and Michael Sokoloff, “Astrolog ical and Related Omen Texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic,” in Al Kanfei Jonah: Collected Studies of Jonas C. Greenfield on Semitic Philology, ed. Shalom Paul et al. (Israel: Daatz, 1995), 436ff.; Reimund Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1968).

  74. 74.

    Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 45a–46a, 46a–47a, 47a–49b.

  75. 75.

    Gundel, Astrologumena, 263, 265; Francesca Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylon ian Celestial Divination : The Lunar Eclipse Tablets of Enūma Anu Enlil (Horn: Verlag Ferdinand Berger, 1988), 7–30; Richard Parker, A Vienna Demotic Papyrus on Eclipse- and Lunar-Omina (Providence: Brown University Press, 1959). See also Quack, in this volume: “Assur will suffer:” Predicting disaster in Ancient Egypt .

  76. 76.

    Ibn Zunbul, al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fol. 49a.

  77. 77.

    The Omnia is a corpus of Assyro-Babylon ian divinatory omens written in cuneiform script on clay tablets. René Labat, Un Calendrier Babylonien des Travaux des Signes et des Mois, Séries IQQUR ĪPUŠ (Paris: Champion, 1965); Parker, A Vienna Demotic Papyrus on Eclipse.

  78. 78.

    “Enūma Anu Enlil […]” [When the gods Anu and Enlil (…)] are the first words, after which a collection of predictions is named. Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylon ian Celestial Divination , 5.

  79. 79.

    Wolfgang Hübner and Hermann Hunger, “Astrolog y,” in Online Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, accessed April 2013.

  80. 80.

    Cf. Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination , 36; Parker, A Vienna Demotic Papyrus, 29.

  81. 81.

    Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylon ian Celestial Divination , 253. For more examples see also Labat, Un Calendrier Babylonien, §69–81, 142–163.

  82. 82.

    Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 51a–54a, 50a–50b, 50b–51a, 54b–56a.

  83. 83.

    Cf. the anonymous manuscript Kitāb gharāʾib al-funūn wa mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn, Bodleian Library, Ms. Arab. c. 90, fols. 13a–14b, online as The Book of Curiosities: A Critical Edition, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith and Yossef Rapoport, accessed January, 2012, http://cosmos.bodley.ox.ac.uk/content.php/mivc.html; Johannes Lydus, Liber de ostentis et calendaria graeca omnia, ed. Curt Wachsmuth (Lipsiae: Teubner, 1897), 35ff.

  84. 84.

    Ibn Zunbul, al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fol. 55b.

  85. 85.

    Labat, Un Calendrier Babylonien, 9; Rochberg-Halton, Aspects of Babylon ian Celestial Divination , 36.

  86. 86.

    This genre was known in the Byzantine Empire as Brontologia or Tonitrualia [Gundel, Astrologumena, 260–261], and can be found in Franz Cumont et al., eds., Catalogus codicum astrologorum Craecorum (Brusselis: Lamertin, 1889–1911), vol. 3 and in Lydus, Liber de ostentis, 54ff.

  87. 87.

    Anonymous manuscript Kitāb bi-hi ḥawādith al-jaww wa ghayrahu, known as al-Raʿdīya [ Book of Thunder ], Egypt ian National Library, Ms. ṬM 214, 31 fols.

  88. 88.

    Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 49a–50a, 56a–57b.

  89. 89.

    Ibid, fol. 49b. Cf. the manuscripts from the National Library of Russia, Фирк. Сам. VII 13, fols. 21b–22a; the National Library of France , Ms. Arabe 4441 and Fodor, Malhamat Daniyal, 113.

  90. 90.

    Labat, Un Calendrier Babylonien, 189.

  91. 91.

    Franz Boll, Codices Germanicos: Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum (Bruxellis: Lamertin, 1908), 7:167–168; Carl Bezold and Franz Boll, Reflexe astologischer Keilinschriften bei griechischen Schriftstellern (Heidelberg : Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1911), 50–52.

  92. 92.

    Ibn Zunbul, al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 57b–60a; Kitāb alf layla, 2:524.

  93. 93.

    Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn, fols. 59a–b; cf. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Ms. Mo. 198 (5915), fols. 42a ff.

  94. 94.

    See a ninth-century anonymous Kalandologion, Ms. P. Mich inv. 590 cited in Gerald Browne, Michigan Coptic Texts (Barcelona: Papyrologica Castroctaviana 1979), 45–47.

  95. 95.

    See also the manuscript in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Ms. Mo. 197,1 (5903) fols. 1–3.

  96. 96.

    Ibn Zunbul, al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn, fols. 63a–88a.

  97. 97.

    Fodor, Malhamat Daniyal, 89.

  98. 98.

    See, for example, David Pingree , Jyotiḥśāstra. Astral and Mathematical Literature (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1981), 67ff.

  99. 99.

    Fodor, Malhamat Daniyal, 95.

  100. 100.

    Ibn Zunbul , al-Kitāb naql min kitāb al-qānūn , fols. 44a, 79a.

  101. 101.

    Fodor, Malhamat Daniyal, 95.

  102. 102.

    Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamia n Astrolog y: An Introduction to Babylon ian and Assyrian Celestial Divination (Copenhagen: Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies, University of Copenhagen, 1995), 132, 163–164.

  103. 103.

    In the Assyrio-Babylonian tradition appropriate rituals played a significant role for the aversion of disastrous events. (Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamia n Astrolog y, 13). We do not have any evidence for a similar tradition conveyed in the Arabic malḥama, which does not mean that it does not exist. In the Arab culture magic, ‘which seeks to alter the course of events’ (Savage-Smith, Introduction, xiii), can be seen as an equivalent to the rituals . See Julius Ruska, ‘Ḳazwīnīstudien’, Islam, 1913, vol. 4, pp. 18, 22.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe, Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Kristine Chalyan-Daffner

Authors
  1. Kristine Chalyan-Daffner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kristine Chalyan-Daffner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fachgebiet Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Institut für Geschichte, Darmstadt, Germany

    Gerrit Jasper Schenk

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Chalyan-Daffner, K. (2017). “Natural” Disasters in the Arabic Astro-meteorological Malḥama Handbooks. In: Schenk, G. (eds) Historical Disaster Experiences. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49163-9_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49163-9_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49162-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49163-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation