Picatrix

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Picatrix is the Latin title of the book Ġāyat al-ḥakīm wa aḥaqq al-natīǧatain bi-'l-taqdīm ("The goal of the wise and that of the more deserving of the two arts"), an Arabic compilation of texts on magic, probably written around 1055 , Astrology and talisman customer . The Arabic text was written in Al-Andalus in the middle of the 10th or 11th century and was translated into Spanish around 1256 on behalf of Alfonso the Wise . The Spanish translation, of which only a fragment has survived, was the starting point for the later Latin versions, in which the work already exerted considerable influence in the western world in part in the Middle Ages and especially in the early modern period .

Dating and authorship of the Ġāyat al-ḥakīm

The Arabic author of the Ġāyat al-ḥakīm does not mention his name, but states that he is also the author of the alchemical book Rutbat al-ḥakīm ("rank of the sage") and the Kitab Ġāyat al-ḥakīm immediately after completing that other work in the Year 343 H (i.e. 954/55 AD) and to have completed 348 H (959/60 AD). The Rutbat al-ḥakīm states that it was written in the years 439-442 H (1047 / 48-1050 / 51 AD), which would be a century later. The manuscripts also offer the deviating reading 339-342 H (ie 951 / 2-953 / 4 AD), which would not offer this problem, but was rejected by Ritter (1933, 1962) because the work was already seems to refer to the time after the chaos of civil war from 1009 to 1018. According to Ritter, the date of origin 439-442 H (1047 / 48-1050 / 51 AD) was therefore preferable for the Rutbat al-ḥakīm and the years in the Ġāyat al-ḥakīm should be increased by 100, so that this work is in the result Period from 443 to 448 H (1050/51 to 1056/57 AD). In both works it can also be deduced from the author that he lived in Spain and that he also wrote an unknown history of Arabic philosophy.

In the later Arab tradition, among others by Ibn Chaldun , both works were ascribed to the mathematician and astronomer Abu l-Qāsim Maslama Ibn Aḥmad al-Maǧrīṭī , who came from "Madrid" (al-Maǧrīṭī), was born around 950 and between 1005 and 1008 died. Due to the incompatibility of these life dates with the assumed later dates of origin of the works in question, however, it has mostly been assumed since Ritter that both works had only been postponed to al-Maǧrīṭī. The author has since been considered a pseudo-Maǧrīṭī, who wrote the Ġāyat al-ḥakīm following the Rutbat al-ḥakīm around the middle of the 11th century.

In recent times this view has been called into question again from various sides. According to Sezgin (1971), the late 11th century dates should be retained, but instead of the famous Abu l-Qāsim Maslama Ibn Aḥmad al-Maǧrīṭī, the author of both works is a younger Abū Maslama Muḥammad Ibn Ibrāhīm Ibn ʿAbdaddāʾim al -Maǧrīṭī , who lived in the first half of the 11th century. Fierro (1996) and Carusi (2000), on the other hand, assume that the author is not a Maslama from Madrid, but a Maslama from Córdoba ( al-Qurṭubī ), namely Maslama Ibn al-Qāsim Ibn Ibrāhīm Ibn ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Ḥātim al-Qurīubī al-Zayyāt , who was born in Córdoba in 906, began long journeys before 932, which took him to Syria , Mecca , Baghdad and Yemen , among others , then returned to Spain after losing his sight and died there in 964 at the age of 58. If he were to be regarded as the author, then according to the dates in the texts themselves, the origin of the Rutbat al-ḥakīm would be according to the variant rejected by Ritter on 339-342 H (ie 951 / 2-953 / 4 AD) and the origin of the Ġāyat al-ḥakīm according to the consistent reading of all manuscripts to be 343-348 H (i.e. 954 / 55-959 / 60 AD).

The name and title Picatrix

While the Arabic author withholds his name, he is referred to in Latin as "sapientissimus philosophus Picatrix", also with the variant "Picatris", who put the book together from numerous other books of philosophy or magic and gave it his name as a title .

In the Spanish and Latin versions, "Picatrix" also appears as a translation of the Arabic name Buqrāṭis or Biqrāṭis , which is cited in the Arabic text as the translator of a book on talismans. Based on this point, Ritter initially assumed that Picatrix / Biqrāṭis was a corruption of the name Hippocrates , but later moved away from this assumption, since the name Hippocrates is otherwise reproduced in the Arabic text in the otherwise common form Buqrāṭ . Alternatively, a derivation from harpocration was suggested. Sezgin, on the other hand, assumes that the Latin name originated from "Bucasis", the usual Latinization of Abu l-Qāsim . According to L. Thomann, "Picatrix" was not created as a transcription of a Greek or Arabic name, but as a translation of the honorable surname Maslama , with its root slm in the sense of "sting, biting like a snake" with Latin / Romance picar (e) ( "sting") was reproduced, so that the feminine Picatrix would consequently be understood as "the stinging, biting" one.

reception

The work in its Latin version ( Picatrix latinus ) was widespread in many manuscripts in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period and was known until the 18th century and was an important source for magicians and hermeticists such as Petrus von Abano , Johannes Trithemius , Agrippa von Nettesheim . Johannes Hartlieb warns in his puch all mocked art (1456) Emperor Maximilian I against the Picatrix as the most perfect and dangerous magical book, which has already brought many readers the eternal damnation (the emperor had two manuscripts of it). In Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel , Pantagruel states that he studied with the Reverend “Père en Diable Piccatrix, docteur de la faculté diabolique” in Toledo.

See also: List of Magical Writings

expenditure

Ġāyat al-ḥakīm
  • Hellmut Ritter: Ġāyat al-ḥakīm wa aḥaqq al-natīǧatain bi-'l-taqdīm. Teubner, Leipzig / Berlin 1933 (= studies of the Warburg library, 12)
Modern translations of the Arabic text
  • Hellmut Ritter / Martin Plessner: Picatrix: The goal of the sage by Pseudo-Mağrīțī. Translation from Arabic. University of London, London 1962 (= Studies of the Warburg Institute, 27). Online: PDF, 47 MB
  • Marcelino Villegas: Picatrix: el fin del sabio y el mejor de los 2 medios para avanzar. Edición Nacional, Madrid 1982 (= Biblioteca de visionarios, heterodoxos y marginados, serie 2, 20) [translation without scientific claim]
Latin versions
  • David Pingree: Picatrix: the Latin version of the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm. University of London, London 1986 (= Studies of the Warburg Institute, 39)
Modern translation based on the Latin versions
  • Paolo A. Rossi (eds.), Davide Arecco / Ida Li Vigni / Stefano Zuffi: PICATRIX: Gāyat al-hakīm, "il fine del saggio" dello pseudo Maslama al-Magriti. Edizione Mimesis, Milan 1999
  • Béatrice Bakhouche / Frédéric Fauquier / Brigitte Pérez-Jean: Picatrix: un traité de magie médiévale . Brepols, Turnhout 2003
  • Dan Attrell, David Porreca: Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magic. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park 2019.

literature

  • Paola Carusi: Alchimia islamica e religione: la legittimazione difficile di una scienza della natura. In: Oriente Moderno 19.3 (2000), pp. 461-502
  • Mirabel Fierro: Bāṭinism in al-Andalus. Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (d. 353/964), author of the Rutbat al-Ḥakīm and Ghayat al-Ḥakīm (Picatrix). In: Studia Islamica 84 (1996), pp. 87–112 [1]
  • Wolf-Dieter Müller-Jahncke : Picatrix. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1161 f.
  • Henry Kahane / Renée Kahane / Angelina Pietrangeli: Picatrix and the Talisman. In: Romance Philology 19 (1965/66), pp. 574-593
  • Vittoria Perrone Compagni: Picatrix latinus: Connezioni filosofico-religious e prassi magica. In: Medioevo 1 (1975), pp. 237-337
  • David Pingree: Some of the sources of the Ġāyat al-ḥakīm . In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980), pp. 1-15
  • David Pingree: Between the Ghaya and Picatrix I: The Spanish Version. In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981), pp. 27-56
  • Martin Plessner: A Medieval Definition of Scientific Experiment in the Hebrew Picatrix. In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973), pp. 358-359
  • Hellmut Ritter: Picatrix, an Arabic manual on Hellenistic magic. In: Fritz Saxl (Ed.), Lectures of the Warburg Library , Vol. 1: Lectures 1921-1922 , Teubner, Leipzig / Berlin 1923, pp. 94–124
  • Fuat Sezgin: History of Arabic literature , Volume IV: Alchemy, chemistry, botany, agriculture: up to approx. 430 H , Brill, Leiden 1971, pp. 294–298 ("Abū Maslama al-Maǧrīṭī")
  • Jean Seznec : The survival of the ancient gods. The mythological tradition in humanism and in Renaissance art. Fink, Munich 1990
  • J. Thomann: The name Picatrix: transcription or translation . In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990), pp. 289-296
  • R. Ramon Guerrero: Textos de al-Fârâbî en una obra andalusí del siglo XI: "Gâyât al-hakîm" de Abû Maslama al-Maŷrît , In: Al-Qantara, 12 (1991) pp. 3-17.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ex. Ritter / Plessner 1962, p. 2
  2. ↑ Ritter / Plessner 1962, p. Xxii note 1
  3. ↑ Ritter / Plessner 1962, pp. Xxi-xxii
  4. ↑ Ritter / Plessner 1962, p. Xxii
  5. ↑ Ritter / Plessner 1962, pp. Xxi-xxii
  6. ↑ Sezgin 1971, p. 294f .; negative ("I am not convinced") Pingree 1986, p. XV, note 1
  7. ↑ Pingree 1986, p. 1: “Sapiens enim philosophus, nobilis et honoratus Picatrix, hunc librum ex CC libris pluribus philosophie compilavit, quem suo proprie nomine nominavit. [...] Incipit liber quem sapientissimus philosophus Picatrix in nigromanticis artibus ex quampluribus libris composuit. "
  8. ↑ Ritter / Plessner 1962, p. 115, cf. P. xxii
  9. ↑ Ritter / Plessner 1962, p. Xxii
  10. ↑ Kahane / Kahane / Pietrangeli 1965/66; Rejecting both derivations from the Greek Pingree 1986, p. XV, note 3
  11. ↑ Sezgin 1971, p. 295
  12. ↑ Thomann 1990
  13. ↑ Ritter 1962, pp. Xx f.
  14. ↑ "In my time, when I was still studying at the high school in Toledo," the venerable Father in the Devil, Picatrix, then Rector of the Diabological Faculty, said to us that devils by nature are just so much in front of the splendor of the sword , we shied away from the light of the sun. ”Franz Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel. Translated by Gottlob Regis. 2 volumes, Munich, Leipzig 1911, p. 417