Al-Athar al-'Ulwiyya (The Meteorology)

Al-Athar al-'Ulwiyya, "the meteorological phenomena", was the title the Arabs gave to Aristotle's Meteorology and to the Meteorology of Theophrastus. Al-Kindi lists the book among the physical sciences, and al-Ya'qubi cites it under the same title. In Jabir's Kitab al-Bahth the meteorology belongs to the middle books of the physical writings. ¹

The first attempts to make Aristotle's physical works accessible in Arabic were paraphrases by the Melchite Yuhanna ibn al-Bitriq, a client of the caliph al-Ma'mun. His translation of the Meteorology, made from a Syriac original, survives in two manuscripts, one at Istanbul and one at Rome. Gerard of Cremona translated its first three books into Latin. Of Theophrastus's Meteorology, Ibn Bahlul translated part, and the Syriac text translated by Bar Bahlul survives. Commentaries of Olympiodorus and Alexander of Aphrodisias were translated but are lost. ²

Aristotle's ideas on the influence of the heavenly spheres on the sublunar world were read in conformity with astrological theory, as in the Book of the Treasure of Alexander. The Mu'tazili al-Nazzam criticised the doctrine of the four elementary qualities. Ibn Sina treated the meteorology in the fifth part of his Shifa', and Ibn Rushd wrote an abridgement. The idea that the spheres bring about the development of minerals, plants and animals also appears in the Ikhwan al-Safa'. ²