It is also true that legends can also contain a kernel of the truth. And Abū Sahl's account may indeed contain some unintended facts that I do not think were sought by Abū Sahl, or even known to him at the time. Only now, we know that many of the observations of ancient Babylonia were certainly used by such important Greek astronomers as Hipparchus (c. 150 B.C.) and Ptolemy (fl. 150 A.D.)[85] and indeed formed the observational foundations of their work, as we shall see. Some of those Babylonian parameters that were adopted by the Greek astronomers were too subtle for Abū Sahl to recognize.
Abū Sahl's true intention, however, was not to relate all that, for I believe he was trying to assert the validity of his own discipline of astrology, and that this validity rested partly on the antiquity of the discipline. His last statement about the decrees of the planets and the zodiacal signs and how they controlled the fate of nations reveals after all his true intentions as an astrologer. That was the kind of belief that was also expressed by the other Persian astrologer, Māshā'allāh in his own history of nations.[86] In sum, one could easily assume that Abū Sahl would make the next logical assertion that his discipline was valid, and that he was the one most knowledgeable about it. Furthermore, by tracing the discipline to a specific person in each period and place, sounds very much like the story that was recounted by al-Fārābī[87] about the history of philosophy, which we have already cited, and where besides having a philosopher associated with a particular king in each period (just as Aristotle was associated with Alexander) Fārābī ended up tracing the history of the philosophical discipline so that he would come out as the major beneficiary of that discipline. Here again, each sage had a country to rule, and a planet to empower him. All these legends have to be contextualized within the prevalent astrological framework that was very well established in the first part of the ninth century, and which stipulated that all people and all nations were subject to the decrees of the stars, as was so cogently attested in the work of Māshā'allāh just cited.[88]
These legendary attempts, whether they were Fārābī's, or Māshā'allāh's, and now Abū Sahl's, denote a desire at all times to seek origins, irrespective of whether those origins were origins of science, origins of cultures, or even origins of legends and epics. That is, Abū Sahl's story could also be seen as a creation story in its own right, except that it specifically targets the creation of culture.
What concerns us more at this juncture is the reason why al-Nadīm used this anecdote in the first place. Without any further evidence, the question is difficult to answer. But from the perspective of al-Nadīm, here posing as the intellectual historian of his time, one could argue that he used this particular anecdote in an effort to present the narrative regarding the rise of science that was probably prevalent among the Persian community members of the Abbāsid Empire at the time of al-Nadīm. And as we shall come back to affirm once more, Abū Sahl's account may have also been used by al-Nadīm in order to share with his reader the prevalent stories about the transmission of science that were known in al-Nadīm's time. And since the story had some kernel of truth, as was just said, al-Nadīm may have felt that he could use it as a first plausible explanation of the transmission of science, an explanation that was obviously commonly adopted by the Persian community in early Abbāsid times.
Furthermore, beginning with Abū Sahl's story also gave al-Nadīm the chance to start from the beginnings, that is, from the origins of science in Babylonia, which may have been his own belief as well. The later stories, that we shall soon see take up the rest of the narrative from the point where Abū Sahl left it (that is, from the time when all the sciences were gathered back in Persia). From then on, al-Nadīm could follow their progression until they reached Islamic civilization, which was his trajectory from the very beginning. In order to illustrate this intention, we should stress first that in this story Abū Sahl said nothing about the history of the sciences of his own time, and ended the story as if all the sciences of Persia were still there to be had, which we know was not historically true. For al-Nadīm, though, all he had to do was to string this story together with others in order to bring those same sciences from Persian into Islamic civilization. The following anecdotes achieve that purpose excellently well, as we shall see.
Al-Nadīm's second story also comes from an astrologer, this time the equally famous Abū Mā'shar al-Balkhī, a one-time ḥadīth scholar who was distracted from his pursuit of pilgrimage and ḥadīth scholarship by studying astrology.
According to Tannūkhī he continued to study astrology until he became an atheist (ḥattā alḥada).[90] The reason for his switch from ḥadīth to astrology was reportedly caused by his enmity with the famous philosopher al-Kindī (d. 870) on account of Kindī's attachment to the ancient sciences, a fact that was first frowned upon by Abū Mā'shar. It was al-Kindī who convinced him to study geometry and arithmetic, apparently on account of their utility to religious studies, and that entry into the ancient sciences led Abū Mā'shar to pursue astrology. The story is indicative of the relationship of astrology to the religious sciences at the time, and reflects an early attempt to attack the ancient sciences on account of their relationship to the religiously condemned discipline of astrology. We shall have a chance to return to this dynamic later on. But it is significant to note here as well that Kindī used arithmetic and geometry here as entries to the foreign sciences and that they were apparently condoned by the religious people. We shall also have occasion to return to this topic as well.
For now, the importance of Abū Mā'shar's story to al-Nadīm was that it began where Abū Sahl's story had left off, and thus Abū Mā'shar's story had the potential of tracing the transmission of the sciences one more step forward before they were finally brought into the Islamic civilization. Abū Mā'shar's book in which the story appears is called Kitāb ikhtilāf al-zījāt (Book on the variations among zījes), and like Abū Sahl's book this one too is apparently lost, except for this fragment which is still obviously preserved in the work of al-Nadīm. For al-Nadīm's purpose the story is of special interest for the following reason:
Abū Mā'shar says, in his book Kitāb ikhtilāf al-zījāt, that the Persian kings' love for the preservation of the sciences, their extreme care in perpetuating them across the ages, and their concern to protect them from natural disasters, both climatic as well as earthly mishaps, has led them to seek for them the most stable of writing material (makātib), most durable, and least likely to be affected by decay and effacement, namely, the bark of khadank (poplar tree), which is called tūz. The Indians, the Chinese and the other nations next to them imitated them in that respect. They also chose the same wood for their arrows on account of their stiffness and smoothness and their durability.
85
I am referring, for example, to the length of the Babylonian lunar month, 29, 31, 50, 8, 20 days, that was reported by Ptolemy in the
86
On Māshā'allāh, see Pingree and Kennedy,
87
See supra, chap. 1, and Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a,
89
90