An astronomer and mathematician of Cordoba, from Madrid, who died around 1007 and who led the most important scientific circle in al-Andalus. He adapted the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi to the meridian of Cordoba, worked on Ptolemy's Planisphaerium, and trained a generation of astronomers whose writing carried into Latin Europe. Two very different books of magic later circulated under the name Maslama, the Rutbat al-Hakim and the Ghayat al-Hakim, the second of which the West knows as the Picatrix. Whether the Maslama of those books is this astronomer or another Andalusi scholar of the same name is disputed, and the atlas does not settle it.
Facts
Life
Lifespan or FloruitDied around 1007. No birth year is recorded. 1 The death is placed shortly before the civil war of 1009. No source gives a year of birth, and none should be quoted. Place of ActivityCordoba, in the last decades of the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus 1 Publications
Notable PublicationA recension of the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi, adapted to the meridian of Cordoba 1 Origins
Place of OriginMadrid (Majrit), in al-Andalus 1 Origin of the Nameal-Majriti, the man from Majrit, which is the Arabic name of Madrid 1 Disputed
Lifespan or FloruitStandard reference works give his death as around 1007 in Cordoba; the exact date is not fixed by a contemporary record, only the year in which his scientific circle is last attested under his own direction. Identity
Also Known AsMaslama ibn Ahmad al-Majriti. Not to be confused with Maslama ibn Qasim al-Qurtubi, a different Andalusi scholar of the same name. 1 Attestation
HistoricityA documented Andalusi astronomer, named in the early biographical literature of al-Andalus and known through his students and his recension of al-Khwarizmi. Learn More
The Cordoban School
The name means the man from Majrit, which is the Arabic name of Madrid, then a frontier fort rather than a city of any importance. His working life was spent at Cordoba, in the last decades of the caliphate, and the early Andalusi accounts of him describe a teacher at the centre of a circle rather than a solitary author.
His best documented work is a recension of the astronomical tables of al-Khwarizmi, adjusted to the meridian of Cordoba and converted from the Persian calendar to the Hijri. Tables are not glamorous, but they are the instrument everything else depends on, and this recension is the version through which al-Khwarizmi's astronomy eventually reached Latin Europe, since the Arabic original does not survive. He is also credited with work on Ptolemy's Planisphaerium, the treatise underlying the theory of the astrolabe, and with writing on the astrolabe itself.
What matters as much is the students. The astronomers who came out of his circle, among them Ibn al-Saffar and Ibn al-Samh, wrote the instrument treatises and tables that later travelled north through the translators, so a good deal of what Latin Europe learned about the astrolabe descends from one Cordoban classroom. He died around 1007, shortly before the civil war that ended the caliphate and scattered its scholars.
Which Maslama Wrote the Picatrix
The Ghayat al-Hakim, the Aim of the Sage, is the largest surviving Arabic handbook of astral magic. It was translated into Castilian and then Latin in the circle of Alfonso X in the 1250s, and the Latin version, called the Picatrix, became one of the most influential magical texts in Europe. Manuscripts of the Arabic ascribe it, and its companion the Rutbat al-Hakim, to a Maslama, and the tradition took that to mean the astronomer of Cordoba.
Maribel Fierro argued in 1996 that it means a different man: Maslama ibn Qasim al-Qurtubi, who died in 964, a traveller and traditionist with esoteric interests whose biography fits the books better. Her case turns on the dates the Rutbat al-Hakim gives for its own composition, which sit awkwardly against the astronomer's career, and on the biographical notices attached to each man. Many scholars now follow her. Others keep the older identification or treat both works as effectively anonymous.
The atlas records the attribution and marks it disputed. It does not assert that this astronomer wrote the Picatrix, and it does not assert that he did not, because the question is genuinely live and the two candidates are separate people who happen to share a name and a century. The specific question of which Maslama is carried as an open question against the text itself, where a specialist can pick it up.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Attributed Works
Why this is disputed. The Arabic Ghayat al-Hakim, later known in Latin as the Picatrix, is traditionally ascribed to the tenth century Andalusian astronomer Maslama al-Majriti, an attribution recorded by the historian Ibn Khaldun. The work's own introduction states it was completed around 959 CE and names an earlier book finished five years before that, a chronology that would place al-Majriti, who died between 1005 and 1008, only a small child when the writing began, and no surviving biography of him mentions this work at all. Modern scholars including Maribel Fierro regard the true author as a different, similarly named figure, Maslama al-Qurtubi.
Belongs to Tradition
Sources
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