Abu-l-faẓl, writing in the 40th year of Akbar, (1596) says (Jarrett II, 4.) that 362 years had elapsed since Naṣīru-d-dīn built his observatory and 156 since Ulugh Beg built his at Samarqand. This gives a date of 1440 for Ulugh Beg's Tables and of 1234 for Naṣīru-d-dīn's, but the latter is certainly wrong, and probably there is some clerical error in the text. If Hulāgū Khān first established him in Marāgha, it is assuredly wrong, but A. F. evidently thinks he was there earlier. (Āīn II, 11.)

The second horoscope was made by Jotik Rai, Akbar's astrologer. We do not know its exact date but it was, of course, drawn many years after Akbar's birth and after the construction, by Humāyūn's orders, of the first and fourth horoscopes.

The third was made by Fatḥu-l-lāh of Shīrāz and could not have been drawn earlier than 991 (1583), for this astronomer did not come to Akbar's Court till that year. Indeed A. F. tells us that it was in the first year of Fatḥu-l-lāh's service that he asked him to compare the horoscopes and reconcile their discrepancies.

Both Maulānā Cānd and Maulānā Alyās put the birth under Virgo and there is no doubt this is correct,—if correctness can be predicated of such matters. The Indian astrologers probably put the birth in Leo because that Sign is the House of the Sun, between whom and Akbar there was supposed to be a mysterious connection. Possibly however, the earlier date of their Tables warranted them in putting the birth under Leo, as A. F. has explained in his chapter on the discrepancies. But granting that this was so, we are not told why their Tables should be preferred to those of Naṣīru-d-dīn and Ulugh Beg. And indeed Abu-l-faẓl does not prefer them. He tells us that Indian Tables agree with the observations of those philosophers who are not aware that there was a movement of the Fixed Stars. In other words, he admits that they are wrong.

If the precession of the equinoxes account for the difference between the Tables, why stop short at the Hindū observations? A. F. calculates that these were made 1190 years before Ulugh Beg's, i.e., about 1336 before Fatḥu-l-lāh cast Akbar's horoscope. According to Bābar (Erskine 51.) the Hindū Tables were made at Ujjain in the time of Vikramāditya, i.e., cir. 57 B.C. According to Tod, (Rājpūtānā) Hindū astronomers now follow the Tables of Jai Singh which were made in 1728. (See Dr. Hunter's paper, Asiatic Researches V, 177.) But why did not he or Fatḥu-l-lāh carry the calculation further back and ascertain the position of the constellations of the Zodiac at the time, say, of the birth of Adam or at least, of Enoch or Idris who, according to Muḥammadans, is the father of astronomy? Some astrolo­gers professed to know the position of the stars at the time of the Creation and held that Adam was born under 1° Capricorn (See infra for A. F.'s account of Adam). And at all events A. F., who seems to have accepted the chronology according to which Adam was born about 7000 before his own time, could have had no difficulty in calculating the position of the constella­tions at that period, allowing one degree for every seventy years.

According to A. F. the difference between the Indian astrologers and Maulānā Cānd amounts to 17°. But apparently Fatḥu-l-lāh did not adopt the Indian calculations, which indeed he probably could not read. (He was a Persian and we are told in the Āīn (Blochmann 104) that he superintended the translation of part of Ulugh Beg's Tables, though, if as has been sup­posed, these were originally written in Persian, one does not see what necessity there was for translating them. There is however a doubt on the point and A. F.'s remark implies that Ulugh Beg's Tables were written in a foreign language, e.g., Arabic or Turkish. According to D'Herbelot, they were first written in Arabic but Sédillot has no doubt that Persian was their original language). Fatḥu-l-lāh, we are told, based his calculations on the Greek and Persian Tables, not on the Indian, and found the cusp of the Ascendant to be 28° 36' Leo.

Leo is the Sign immediately preceding Virgo, and if the difference of the Hindū and Persian calculations be 17°, the cusp according to the former, should apparently be 20° Leo, for Maulānā Cānd's horoscope brought out the cusp of the Ascendant as 7° Virgo. We are not told what Tables Fatḥu-l-lāh used and are left in the dark as to his modus operandi. The difference between his calculations and those of Maulānā Cānd was apparently, about 81/2° viz., from 28° 36' Leo to 7° Virgo. If, as A. F. does, we take the rate of precession to be one degree in 70 years, Fatḥu-l-lāh must have used Tables made about 600 years before Ulugh Beg's. This would give a date of about 830 A.D., which approximates to the Baghdād observations of the Khalīf Māmūn referred to in the Āīn (Jarrett II. 3.)

If we take the more correct rate of precession, viz., one degree in 72 years, we get a still closer approximation for 81/2°=612 years and this, deducted from 1434=822 A.D.

I regret that I have not been able to translate the four horoscope chapters in a satisfactory manner. They are difficult, for several words of frequent use in them, are not to be found in our dictionaries, at least not with their astronomical meaning. Dozy's Supplement is of little or no use for astro­logical terms, and Lane appears to ignore them altogether. Unfortunately with all his amplitude of detail, A. F. fails us at the very pinch of the case. That is, he gives no explanation of Fatḥu-l-lāh's modus operandi and does not tell us how he managed to bring the horoscope into Leo.

It is probable that in places, the text is corrupt.

Books on astrology are very numerous. One of the best of the old treatises is De Judiciis Astrorum by ‘Alī Abu-l-ḥasan (Albohazan Haly Aben Rajal). He, it appears, was born in Spain, for he is styled Ash-Shaibānī and Ash-Shabīlī (Hispaliensis) and his full name is Abu-l-ḥasan ‘Alī Ibn Abi-r-rajālu-sh-shaibānī.

In Hammer-Purgstall's History of Arabian Literature, (6436) he is styled ‘Alī Ibn Rajāl and we are told that Europeans called him Aben-Ragel and that he was born at Cordova and lived in the beginning of the 5th century of the Hijra.

His work on astrology, “Opus magnum de astrologia, octo partibus compre­hensum,” was first translated from Arabic into Spanish by order of Alphonso, the king of Castile, and afterwards from Spanish into Latin. He appears also to have been a poet, for a poem of his on astrology is mentioned in Casiri's catalogue of the Escurial Library I, 128 and 344. The best edition of Haly's work appears to be that by Anthony Stupa, Basle, 1551. There is a copy of this in the British Museum and bound up with it, is an elaborate treatise on astrology by Guido Bonatus and also a commentary on the Tetrabiblos.

Guido Bonatus, also called Guido Bonatti and Bonati, was a noted astrologer of the 13th century. He was a native of Florence, but is commonly called Foroliviensis or De Foro Livii, the modern Forli, a town on the eastern side of the Appenines and not far from Ravenna. He is said by his astro­logical skill to have saved Forli from a siege. Eventually he became a monk and died in 1296.

Lilly quotes Abu-l-ḥasan under the name of Haly and Sir Walter Scott makes Guy Mannering refer both to him and to Guido Bonatus. Délambre says, in his History of astronomy in the Middle Ages, that Abu-l-ḥasan's book “est l'un des plus clairs, des plus méthodiques, and des plus complétes que nous ayons. C'est une compilation de tout ce que les sages de différents pays et de différents siécles avaient 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 will 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 Hindū astrology, I can recommend two Bengali books kindly sent me by Dr. Grierson, viz., the Jyōtiṣa Prakāça (Beni Madhab De & Co., Calcutta, 1882, Sak. 1804) and the Varāha Mihira of Kali Prosanna Chattarji (1891, Fasli 1300). I have also found the notes of Muḥammad Ṣādiq ‘Alī the Lucknow editor of the Akbarnāma very useful and I have obtained some light from the two elaborate horoscopes of Shāh Jahān,—one of his birth and the other of his accession,—which are given in ‘Abdu-l-ḥamīd's Bādshāhnāma.