The Book of Akbar 52.8

52.8

Lilly quotes Abu-l-Hasan under the name of Haly and Sir Walter Scott makes Guy Mannering refer both to him and to Guido Bonatus. Delambre says, in his History of astronomy in the Middle Ages, that Abu-l-hasan's book “est l’un des plus clairs, des plus methodiques, and des plus completes que nous ayons. C’est une compilation de tout ce que les sages de differents pays et de differents siecles ayaient écrit sur ce sujet futile.” It appears that Haly was a Christian. There is a MS. copy of his work in the British Museum written in beautifully clear Arabic characters. It is numbered 23,399. See Codices Arabici 623b. It is to be hoped that some day an Arabic scholar print and edit it. Lilly’s Christian Astrology and the works of Zadkiel are useful and so also are Wilson's Dictionary of Astrology (London, 1819), and a work by E. Sibley in two quarto volumes and published in 1817. For Hindu astrology, I can commend two Bengali books kindly sent me by Dr. Grierson, viz., the Jyotisha Prakasa (Beni Madhab De & Co., Calcutta, 1882, Sak. 1804) and the Varaha Mihira of Kali Prosanna Chattarji (1891, Fasli 1300). I have also found the notes of Muhammad Sadiq ‘Alī the Lucknow editor of the Akbarnāma very useful and I have obtained some light from the two elaborate horoscopes of Shah Jahan,—one of his birth and the other of his accession,—which are given in 'Abdu-l-Hamīd’s Bādshāhnāma.