Mal tiempo en Bagdad: al-Ṭurṭūšī y el “eclipse” de 478/1085-1086

David J. Wasserstein

doi:10.3989/alqantara.2019.007

Authors

David J. Wasserstein Vanderbilt University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0514-4199

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/alqantara.2019.007

Keywords:

al-Ṭurṭūshī, Muḥammad Iḅn Waḍḍāḥ, al-Dhahabī, eclipses, dust-storm, simoom, Baghdad

Abstract

The article discusses an autobiographical passage in the life of al-Ṭurṭūshī (ca. 451/1059-520/1126, or Jumādā I 525/April 1131) contained in the Siyar A‘lām al-Nubalā’ of al-Dhahabī (673/1274-748/1348). The text reports a remarkable set of meteorological phenomena during al-Ṭurṭūshī’s visit to Baghdad in 478/1085-86. Fierro interpreted the story as a description of an eclipse, and as lying at the origin of al-Ṭurṭūshī’s turn to asceticism, paralleling a similar story about the earlier Muḥammad Iḅn Waḍḍāḥ. I show here, based on astronomical records, that there was no eclipse at that time in Baghdad, consequently that what al-Ṭurṭūshī experienced could not have been one. Further, al-Ṭurṭūshī did not understand it as having been one. It could not, therefore, have been the cause of his turn to asceticism. The description points more naturally instead to a dust-storm, or simoom. There is therefore no link, literary or other, between this aspect of the life of al-Ṭurṭūshī and that of Muḥammad Iḅn Waḍḍāḥ.

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