Skyscript Astrology Forum

I am somewhat confused why Perso-Arabic astrologers seem to suggest the foundational ingress chart for Islam has Libra rising.

Perso-Arabic astrologers such as Ab? Ma??har and Masha'Allah suggested that the rise of great religions were linked to the birth of religious figures born in proximity to a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction and especially when such a conjunction marked a change of triplicity.

Hence, the change of Jupiter-Saturn conjunction into the water triplicity in 571 CE was used a key point to mark this rise of Islam with the birth of the Prophet Muhammed in 570 CE.

In medieval astrology they used the prior ingress to such a great conjunction as the foundational chart for the new faith.

Hence the foundational chart for the rise of the Islamic faith was based on the Aries ingress of 571. This was presented in Ab? Ma??har's work ''On Historical Astrology: The Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions)'', translated by Charles Burnett & Keiji Yamamoto, Brill, Leiden, (2000). Ab? Ma??har presents this as the Chart for the Islamic religion dated for 19th March 571 CE with an ASC of 27 Libra.
However, when I cast an Aries ingress chart for the year of the Jupiter-Saturn great conjunction in Scorpio (571 CE) I get either 3 Aquarius rising (tropical) or 28-29 Capricorn (various sidereal ayanamsa).
I understand the planetary astronomical tables relied on at this time were often in error but that doesn't seem to explain this. And it cannot be an issue of the zodiac used either because the difference was only about 4-5 degrees.

So how do we explain this apparent discrepancy?

A few possibilities...

1 There seems to be a tradition (whether accurate or not) that the Prophet Muhammed had Libra rising in his natal chart. Could this be an attempt to ?tweak? the Aries ingress chart ASC to make it fit this?

Ibrahim Allawi in his paper, "Some Evolutionary and Cosmological Aspects to Early Islamic Town Planning",(1998) notes that Masha?Allah placed the Ascendant of the prophet in that constellation (Libra) (p64) and he tells us this is shown as the ?magic ascendant??.

http://archnet.org/publications/3097

But I don?t see any source from Allawi for stating this. Also astrologers who have sought to resurrect a chart from the references in Masha ?Allah have calculated a variety of dates/times for a chart for Muhammed.

I recommend reading the source notes on the chart of the Prophet Muhammed on Astrodatabank. In particular, the detailed notes by Larry Ely. I am informed by Deborah Houlding this is an accurate rendition of what the Masha ?Allah text states.

http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Mohammed

2 Since Islam's holy day was a Friday an attempt to link the chart to its planetary day ruler Venus?

3 A desire to have the faith identified with a benefic by Perso-Arabic astrology?

Any suggestions?

Mark wrote:I understand the planetary astronomical tables relied on at this time were often in error but that doesn't seem to explain this. And it cannot be an issue of the zodiac used either because the difference was only about 4 degrees.

But if the offset between the tropical zodiac and the sidereal value used by the Perso-Arabic astrologers was, say, 3?15' (this is just an example, as I don't know what value they were using), then that discrepancy in the position of the Sun (which is the position defining the time for which the chart is cast) would correspond roughly to 3 days 6 hours. The difference in hours is what causes the different ascendant -- unless I'm missing something.

The chart was set for the exact moment of the ingress, and I can imagine that the calculation of that could vary considerably according to location, precision of the tables used, the fact that many elements of the calculation would have been determined arithmetically rather than astronomically, and that what modern software computes to be the exact moment of the ingress might be different from historical expectations. But let's say there is a mere 1 degree discrepancy in the position of the Sun as we and they understood it - that alone would open up a 24 hour window, which allows any sign of the zodiac to rise on the ascendant.
The chart you show differs slightly from that described by Mashalllah (in Pingree and Kennedy's Astrological History of MashaAllah), and there are three historical records of that which all have the ascendant in Libra - though two records show the ascendant at 22 Libra and one has it at 25.45 Libra.
BTW - why do you expect that the chart was set for Mecca?

Martin Gansten wrote:

But if the offset between the tropical zodiac and the sidereal value used by the Perso-Arabic astrologers was, say, 3?15' (this is just an example, as I don't know what value they were using), then that discrepancy in the position of the Sun (which is the position defining the time for which the chart is cast) would correspond roughly to 3 days 6 hours. The difference in hours is what causes the different ascendant -- unless I'm missing something.

Ah thanks! I confess I totally missed that but its self evident now you mention it!

James Holden in his article for the chart for Baghdad suggests the early Perso-Arab astrologers used a fixed zodiac for planetary positions but tropical calculations for plotting of the angles. If the same was the case for the foundational ingress for Islam I guess that would explain the confusion. With a planetary variance from the tropical zodiac of about 4? you would need to resurrect their exact solar ayanamsa.

Mark

Deb wrote:

The chart was set for the exact moment of the ingress, and I can imagine that the calculation of that could vary considerably according to location, precision of the tables used, the fact that many elements of the calculation would have been determined arithmetically rather than astronomically, and that what modern software computes to be the exact moment of the ingress might be different from historical expectations. But let's say there is a mere 1 degree discrepancy in the position of the Sun as we and they understood it - that alone would open up a 24 hour window, which allows any sign of the zodiac to rise on the ascendant.

Yes Martin cleared that confusion up for me but thanks for taking the time to clarify further. There are clearly a lot of factors to explain this.

Deb wrote:

The chart you show differs slightly from that described by Mashalllah (in Pingree and Kennedy's Astrological History of MashaAllah), and there are three historical records of that which all have the ascendant in Libra - though two records show the ascendant at 22 Libra and one has it at 25.45 Libra.
BTW - why do you expect that the chart was set for Mecca?

Are these charts for Islam or the nativity of Muhammed you are discussing? I assume the latter.

I located the chart for Mecca because I understood that was the part of Arabia where the Prophet Muhammed was born. Also Mecca became the centre of the new faith after the Muslims conquered central Arabia. Do you think the Perso-Arabic astrologers would have used Medina instead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad

Mark

Sorry - missed Martin's post as I got distracted when writing mine by trying to find confirmation of the location; but I couldn't find it quickly and have to move on to something else now. The chart described by Masha Allah is one of a series of conjunction charts; I am not sure if I have cast this one myself in the past but I have recalculated some of them using the co-ordinates for Baghdad (I think) and they matched well. Probably need someone else to confirm this though, because my memory is not good today.

Deb wrote:

I have recalculated some of them using the co-ordinates for Baghdad (I think) and they matched well. Probably need someone else to confirm this though, because my memory is not good today.

Ahhh I never even considered that possibility! But from the POV of these astrologers Baghdad was the centre of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) in their time so that has logic to it. Although, considering Baghdad wasn't even built when Islam was established it does seem a rather odd approach to astrologers looking for the location of a foundational ingress chart for Islam today.

Mark

Many assume that the rate of rotation of the earth is a constant, but this isn't so. There's a variable known in astronomy as Delta Time which represents the rate of rotational acceleration or deceleration caused by various factors such as the gravitational torque by the Moon on the Earth's equatorial bulge, earthquakes, etc... For instance in 2004 when the Tsunami hit on Dec 26th in southeast asia, it caused the length of the year to be 10 seconds longer than expected. Over time this can add up to several minutes difference than the standard measurements in modern times. Historically this can only be estimated, so expectations for ascendants to be accurate to the degree prior to 1700 are very misguided. You're lucky if you have the correct rising sign.

If it is not the time , it must be the place. Holy charts could be constructed for a mythological or a hypothetical place.

PD

A precession value of 0 deg 40 min will give you Sun in Aries and Asc Libra with thereabouts Moon:

19 March 571 AD Julian
1810 hrs
Baghdad or thereabouts.(Jerusalem)

The evening time fits very conveniently with their day starting in the evening.
another 20 deft on asc means sun would have moved by 5 mins. so either an error of zero degree 40 mins or a precession value of that amount would fit in nicely.

I think it was @MartinGansten who believes that all early charts were sidereal anyway.

Pankadjubey wrote:

The evening time fits very conveniently with their day starting in the evening.
another 20 deft on asc means sun would have moved by 5 mins. so either an error of zero degree 40 mins or a precession value of that amount would fit in nicely.

I think it was @MartinGansten who believes that all early charts were sidereal anyway.

Thanks Pankadjubey,

That raises an interesting point for me. Looking at the horoscope for the founding of Baghdad , James Holden suggested these astrologers were calculating the angles with tropical calculations but the planetary tables they were initially relying on had been sidereal.

However, the Sun position for the Aries ingress described by Abu' Mashar for the founding of Islam doesn't seem consistent with that. Calculating the Aries ingress with any known sidereal ayanamsa doesn't give you an ingress anywhere close to March 19th 571 CE. Instead a plethora of sidereal ayanamasa ( Lahiri, Fagan-Allen, Krishnamurti etc) dont allow a solar ingress until 4 or 5 days later. So while their tables might not have been entirely accurate this looks much more like a tropical than a sidereal zodiac to calculate the solar ingress.

Mark

This one for Khartoum and Aryabhatta ayanamsha comes closest to what you want.
The chart is sidereal and the MC,Asc and Moon match closely.

19 March 571 AD Julian
7.55PM LMT
Khartoum or some special place in Early Arabic Sudan for which they may have had Table of Latitudes etc.

Aryabhatta ayanamsha 522 AD(=Zero year)
This is on Astrodienst drop down menu of Ayanamshas.

http://i64.tinypic.com/2ms27v8.png