On his life and Syriac-language works, from
Syriac
“At this
time” – the 890s CE – “ˀAbû al-Ḥasân
Tabith,” – Thābit, father of Ḥasān – “one of the heathen of Ḥârrân became known
(or, famous); he was the son of [Q]ûrah, the son of Marwân, the son of [Q]îûrâ,
the son of ˀAbrâhâm, the son of [Q]îûrâ, the son of Mârînôs, the son of
Sôlômôn. Originally he was a money-changer in the bazâr of Ḥârrân. Then he
occupied himself in a marvelous degree with philosophy, and he was adequately
acquainted with three languages—Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. He composed in
Arabic about one hundred and fifty books on logic, and mathematics, and
astrology, and medicine. And in Syriac he compiled about sixteen books, the
greater number of which we” – the Christian historian Gregory Gregory Bar
Hebraeus writing around 1273 CE – “have seen and possess, viz.
- a Book on the Laws and Canons of the heathen;
- a Book on the Burial of the Dead;
- a Book on the certainty of the Confession (i.e. Faith) of the heathen;
- a Book on Purity and Impurity;
- a Book on the Animals which are suitable for offering up as Sacrifices;
- a Book on the Times of Prayer;
- a Book on the Readings which are suitable for the Seven Stars in Prayer;
- a Book on Repentance and Supplication;
- a Book of Music;
- a Book on the Chronology of the ancient kings who were Chaldaeans;
- a Book on the Confession (i.e. Faith) of the Ṣabâyê (Sabae[a]ns);
- a Book on the division of the days of the week according to the Seven Stars;
- a Book on the renown (or, purity) of his Race,” – I doubt ‘race’, much less ‘purity of race’, captures the meaning – “and on his Ancestors, and from whom they were descended;
- a Book on the Laws of Hermes and his Prayers which the heathen pray;
- a Book on the statement ‘two straight lines being extended diminishingly from two straight angles, meet together’;
- and another Book on Metre*.”
(transl. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Chronography of Gregory Abû'l Faraj, the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew
Physician, Commonly Known as Bar Hebraeus: Being the First Part of his
Political History of the Word: Translated from the Syriac, vol. 1, 1932)
Except for
one fragment that Bar Hebraeus himself quotes, nothing of these Syriac texts
remains, although the Book on ‘two straight lines, etc.’ still exists in Arabic.
(A list of the many, many known Arabic works will be part of a future post.)
Bar Hebraeus’ fragment (from an unnamed work)
“And in one
of his dissertations praising Ḥârrân and
heathenism he spake thus:” (transl. Budge)
“Whereas many submitted to the false doctrine
under torture, our ancestors held out with the help of God and came through by a
heroic effort; and this blessed city has never been sullied by the false
doctrine of Nazareth. Paganism (hanputa),
which used to be the object of public celebration in this world, is our
heritage, and we shall pass it on to our children. Lucky the man who endures
hardship with a well-founded hope for the sake of paganism! Who was it that
settled the inhabited world and propagated cities, if not the outstanding men
and kings of paganism? Who applied engineering to the harbors and the rivers?
Who revealed the arcane sciences? Who was vouchsafed the epiphany of that
godhead who gives oracles and makes known future events, if not the most famous
of the pagans? It is they who blazed all these trails. The dawn of medical
science was their achievement: they showed both how souls can be saved and how
bodies can be healed. They filled the world with upright conduct and with
wisdom, which is the chief part of virtue. Without the gifts of paganism, the
earth would have been empty and impoverished, enveloped in a great shroud of
destitution.” (transl. in Fowden, Empire
to Commonwealth. Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, 1993)
“These
things we have quoted from the words of this man so that we may make manifest
his great ability in writing the Syriac language; and his discourses in Greek
and Arabic were even more elegant.” (transl. Budge)
Greek works
by Thābit are not, I think, mentioned by other
authors, but there is nothing improbable about the idea.
Another account of his life, from Arabic
“A Sabian from the
people of Ḥarrān, he moved to the city of Baghdad and made it his own. With
him, it was philosophy that came first. He lived in the reign of al-Muˁtaḍid.
We are indebted to him for numerous books on different branches of knowledge
such as logic, arithmetic, geometry, astrology and astronomy. We owe to him an
amazing book: the Introduction to the Book
of Euclid (Kitāb mudkhil ilā K. Uqlīdis),
and a book: the Introduction to Logic
(Kitāb al-Mudkhal ilā al-manṭiq). He
translated the book on al-Arithmāṭīqī
and summarized the book on The Art of
Healing (Kitāb Ḥilat al-burˀ). In
his knowledge he ranks among the most outstanding. He was born in the year two
hundred and twenty-one at Ḥarrān, where he worked as a money-changer. Muḥammad
ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir brought him back when he returned from the country of the
Byzantines, for he had found him eloquent. He is said to have gone to live with
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā and to have pursued his studies in his house. He thus had
some influence over his career. Muḥammad ibn Mūsā put him in touch with al-Muˁtaḍid,
and introduced him to the astronomers’ circle. He it was [Thābit] who
introduced Sabian management to Iraq. In this way their social position was
determined, their status raised, and they” – the Sabians, i.e. pagans – “attained
distinction. Thābit ibn Qurra achieved so prestigious a rank and so eminent a position
at the court of al-Muˁtaḍid that he
would even sit down in his presence at any time he wished, speak with him at
length and joke with him, and come to see him even when his ministers or his
intimates were not there.”
(Al-Qifṭī, Taˀrikh al-ḥukamāˀ,
transl. Rashed, Thābit ibn Qurra : From Ḥarrān to
Baghdad, in: Thābit ibn Qurra. Science and Philosophy in
Ninth-Century Baghdad,
2009, p. 15, n. 1)
Anecdotes about Thābit’s marvelous knowledge
“1 . Ṯābit ibn Qurra, the
Harrānian, told the following story: "The spirits [arwāḥ] of Saturn were united with me and were helping me against
everyone who was opposing me. It happened that
an invidious person incited al-Muwaffaq against me in the affair of his
son, al-Muˁtaḍid, and claimed that I had incited him to do something vile. Consequently
he [al-Muwaffaq] was very angry with me, and I thought he was going to kill me.
As I was sleeping on my bed my spirit [ruḥānīya]
came to me, aroused me from my slumber, and ordered me to flee. So I left my house
and went into die house of a friend. Just before dawn a messenger from
al-Muwaffaq came and looked for me, but did not find me either in my own house,
or in those of my neighbours. When I got up, I received the news from mv house
that the messenger of al-Muwaffaq had looked for me; then he looked for my son
Sinān. He was in his bed, but thev did not see him. Then I received the news
that [the spirit] concealed him from the search. Moreover, the torches that he
[the messenger] had with him, went out, and thev [the messenger's entourage] tried
to re-light them but failed. Mv son was coming and going among them in the
house and thev did not recognise him, but thev thought that, he was one of
their own number. Then I questioned my spirit, saving: "Whv did you not do
the same for me as you did for mv son?" Thev [the spirits] replied:
"Your hayhāǧ* was in opposition
to Mars and to a fixed star of Mars' complexion. So we did not feel secure in
vour case as we did in that of your son Sinan; for his hayhāǧ was safe from the malefics".
(*the point on the
zodiac to which an individual is connected; fuller explanation in Burnett.)
2. Then I made a
talisman and it overcame the enemv after 40 days. I got help against him [my
enemv] from one of mv brothers, over whom Mars was dominant, and he met with a dreadful
end. Then mv spirit was angrv with me and punished me so that I feared for mv
life. So I apologised to her and told her: "I thought you were too
important to be concerned with affairs like those for which I was asking help
from others". I did not stop trying to placate her with sacrifice and
prayer until she stopped harming my condition.
3. Then I asked him
[the spirit of Saturn] to mend the heart of al-Muwaffaq towards me. But Saturn
is a cold planet by nature and slow in movement, and so was taking a long time
to deal with my case. So I asked Venus for help and made a sacrifice to her. At
the same time I made a sacrifice to niv spirit so that she should not harm me
for asking for Venus' help. The aim was achieved and I was saved".
4. From her [the
spirit] <it resulted> that he [Ṯābit] was able both to save the oppressed
from the hands of the oppressors and to see far-off things and to act on them. Ṯābit
ibn Qurra said: "One of the Ancients has described an eye-ointment which makes
you see everything distant from you as if it is right in from of you". He
said: "I prepared this ointment [?], and one of the people of Babylon
(=Baghdad) used it on himself and he told me that he saw all the wandering and
fixed stars in their positions, and die light of his eyes penetrated through thick
bodies and he could see what was behind them. So Qustā ibn Lūqā al-Baˁlabakkī
and myself tested him. We went into a house and wrote something, and he read it
out and stopped at the beginning and end of every line, as if he were with us.
Then we took a sheet of paper and wrote on it, with a thick wall between us,
and he took a sheet and copied what we had written as if he were looking at
what we had written. Finally, Qustā ibn Lūqā asked for news about a brother of
his in Baˁlabakk. He looked hard; then he told us that he was ill and that he
had produced a child whose ascendant was Taurus 3°. We investigated this and
found that it was as he had said".”
(Faḥr ad-Dīn al-Rāzī’s
kitāb al-sir al-maktūm, ‘Book of the
Hidden Secret’, transl. Burnett, Ṯābit
ibn Qurra the Harrānian on Talismans and the Spirits of the Planets, in: La corónica. A Journal of Medieval Hispanic
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, vol. 36.1 (2007), 13–40; Faḥr ad-Dīn
al-Rāzī, who lived centuries later, is not the “myself” of the fourth
paragraph)
The interactions with a spirit of Saturn is not something that can be explained simply as practices inherited from ancient Greek or Mesopotamian usage; I will return to this issue in the part #8b, about Thābit’s book on talismans (De imaginibus or Liber prestigiorum).
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