Book on the Eclipses of the Moon and the Sun

The original Arabic text of Māshāʼallāh’s Book on the Eclipses of the Moon and the Sun has been lost, but it survives in Latin and Hebrew translations that proved immensely popular in medieval and early modern Europe. Māshāʼallāh identifies the influences that the planets have on weather, politics, and prophets. Eclipses play a particularly important role in his system. Some have suggested that the Hebrew translation from the Arabic, from which this excerpt is drawn, was done by Abraham Ibn Ezra and that he used the Latin translation, produced by John of Seville in the twelfth century, as a reference.