Picatrix - Authorship and Significance of Title

Authorship and Significance of Title

The Arab historian, Ibn Khaldun, ascribed authorship of Picatrix (referring to the original Arabic version, under the title Ġāyat al-Ḥakīm) to the mathematician, al-Majriti, who died between 1005CE and 1008CE. However, according to Holmyard, the earliest manuscript attribution of the work to Maslama al-Majriti was made by the alchemist al-Jildaki, who died shortly after 1360, while Ibn Khaldun died some 20 years later. However, no biography of al-Majriti mentions him as the author of this work.

More recent attributions of authorship range from "the Arabic version is anonymous" to reiterations of the old claim that the author is "the celebrated astronomer and mathematician Abu l-Qasim Maslama b. Ahmad Al-Majriti". One recent study in Studia Islamica suggests that the authorship of this work should be attributed to Maslama b. Qasim al-Qurtubi (died 353/964), who according to Ibn al-Faradi was "a man of charms and talismans". If this suggestion is correct it would place the work in the context of Andalusian sufism and batinism.

The odd Latin title is sometimes explained as a sloppy transliteration of one "Buqratis", mentioned several times in the second of the four books of the work. Others have suggested that the title (or the name of the author) is a way of attributing the work to Hippocrates (via a transcription of the name Burqratis or Biqratis in the Arabic text). Where it appears in the Arabic original, the Latin text does translate the name Burqratis as Picatrix, however, this still does not establish the identity of Burqratis. Some have argued that this was a corruption of the name Hippocrates, but this explanation has fallen into disfavor because the text cites Hippocrates under the name Ypocras.

However, another interpretation, perhaps more convincing, suggests that Picatrix is a translation of the first name of the individual often indicated as the author of the work, (pseudo) Maslama al-Majriti. Maslama derives from the Arabic root s-l-m, of which one of the meanings offered in Arabic lexica is "to sting". According to this view Maslama would have been translated as Picatrix, which is a feminine variant of the Latin picator "one who stings or pricks", based on the translator's belief that Maslama was a feminine form. Obviously the explanation of Picatrix as a translation of Maslama would apply just as well to Abu l-Qasim Maslama b. Qasim al-Qurtub as to Abu l-Qasim Maslama b. Ahmad Al-Majriti.