Thanks for creating this topic in the first place, Deb. While astrology in contemporary times is strongly associated with women, you are quite correct in drawing attention to the scarcity of women in early astrology.

I wrote the article about Buran for several reasons:

1) She is the only astrological woman from "the olden days" that I have thus far discovered -- though I certainly hope we will eventually discover more of them.

2) Her birth data exists.

3) Biographical information re: early astrologers is all too uncommon. We have Shadhan's stories of Abu Ma'shar -- though some of these are so mystical and even surreal that one wonders if Burnett was correct in envisioning Abu Ma'shar as a kind of proto-Sufi with Harranite affiiations. We know the outlines of Bonatti's life and we know a great deal about Ficino. From Elizabethan times, Simon Forman has been well studied. But it is not until we reach the autobiographical passages from Culpepper and Lilly that I personally feel like I can come to KNOW these people. Not only was Buran an early astrological woman, she also appears in the writings of all the early Muslim historians because of her political importance. I do not pretend to have located all the sources, though I would like to explore more of them. There is a tremendous amount of detailed and even emotionally revealing information available about her life.

On this very "human" level, I forgot one detail. The caliphs who followed al-M'amun were mostly fundamentalists, and they moved the capitol from Baghdad to Samarra, where they were protected by their palace guards to the point where they almost became prisoners of their own protectors. Some years later, a young and assertive caliph whose name I have forgotten decided to take up al-M'amun's banner of studying Hellenistic philosophy. He wanted to re-establish the House of Wisdom. But by that time even the caliph didn't own any decent Baghdad real estate. He went to the palace in which Buran, now in her 70s, was living, and he told her of his dream to re-establish the House of Wisdom, and of his need for a new venue. It is said that Buran just smiled and told him she could move into one of her other houses within a couple of weeks, and he was welcome to use her palace to re-establish her husband's dream of a Hellenized Islam. This is the last historical notice that we have about her, but oh, what a fine ending to her story! There are probably more such details in other Muslim historians.

Deb, you have my deepest respect for your attempts to help in the work of restoring the history of our tradition. May we continue to learn!