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Description
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ALBUMASAR. Introductorium in astronomiam ... octo continens libros partiales. [colophon:] Venice, Jacobius Pentius de Leucho for Melchior Sessa, 1506. 1„l(bin.) + 7 tit. + 1„ + 124 (unpaginated) + 1l.„ + 1l. (bind.). 8 vo, with fine woodcut vignette on title of a black-faced astronomer in a landscape reading the stars an astrolable and dividers, 43 small woodcut emblems of the planets and signs of the zodiac in text, 2 astronomical diagrams in text, numerous fine woodcut initials, printer's device at colophon; without the final blank; moder vellum. 'The Great Introduction' Kitab al-Mudkhal al-kabir, the most important work of the Arabic astrologer most frequently quoted in the West. It contains an astrological theory of the tides (Abu Mas'shar's justification of astrology resting on the manifest influence of the moon in this connection) which was the principal source of the Middle Ages for speculation on the subject (see Duhem, Le systeme du monde, II, pp. 369-386). This is the concise translation of Hermann of Carinthia, made in 1140 and first printed by Ratdolt in Augsburg in 1489. The title vignette in this edition is one of the best known Renaissance representation of an astronomer. On Hermann, see: Charles Burnett, 'Arabic into Latin in twelfth-century Spain: the works of Hermann of Carinthia' in Mittellateinsches Fahrbuch, 1978, pp. 100-34. Adams A566; Carmody p. 90; IA 102. 833; Lalande p. 32; Essling 525; Sander 214: |
