A Hitherto Unknown Translation by Abraham Ibn Ezra of a Treatise by Abū Ma'shar: Edition of the French Translation by Hagin le Juif and English Translation

Henry Bate (1246–after 1310), the first to bring Ibn Ezra’s astrological work to Latin readers, commissioned a Jewish scholar named Hagin le Juif to translate a collection of four astrological works by Ibn Ezra from Hebrew into French. These four French translations are preserved in two manuscripts. In the earliest of them (MS fr. 24276, Paris, BnF, fols. 1a–66a; copied in 1273), immediately after the French translations of Ibn Ezra’s Sefer ha-Moladot (Book of Nativities), there is another French translation entitled Le Livre Even Massar des Revolucions du Siecle (The Book by Abū Máshar on the Revolutions of the World; henceforth Revolucions). So far, despite modern scholars’ interest in Abū Ma'shar’s work, no in-depth and detailed research has been conducted into the text and French terminology of Revolucions, into the relationship between the French terminology of Revolucions and that of the other four French translations included in the same manuscript, or into the relationship between the French terminology of Revolucions and that of the Hebrew astrological writings by Ibn Ezra. The main objective of the current study is to argue that Revolucions was carried out by Hagin le Juif on the basis of a Hebrew translation carried out by Abraham Ibn Ezra, and to offer an edition of Revolucions, accompanied by an English translation and introductory study.