Iran / Persia / Afghanistan: Sun and lion symbols from an astrological treatise by Abu Ma'shar Ibn Balkhi, 850 CE

Abū Ma'shar, Ja'far ibn Muḥammad al-Balkhī (also known as al-Falakī or Ibn Balkhī, Latinized as Albumasar, Albusar, or Albuxar) (10 August 787 in Balkh, Khurasan – 9 March 886 in Wāsiṭ, Iraq), was a Persian astrologer, astronomer, and Islamic philosopher, thought to be the greatest astrologer of the Abbasid court in Baghdad.

He was not a major innovator, and his works are practical books for training of astrologers; even as an astrologer he was not intellectually rigorous. Nevertheless, he wrote a number of practical manuals on astrology that profoundly influenced Muslim intellectual history and, through translations, that of western Europe and Byzantium.

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