Machine summary:
In the ninth century a very considerable body of students of hidden lore was situated in Baghdad and in Moorish Spain, and although not all of these were Arabs· or even Muslims, still all of them wrote in Arabic and conformed to Arabic ways of thought in the hidden sciences.
influence upon the mcdireval learning of Europe, as had Alkindi's treatise " On Sleep and Visions," which also we only know from a Latin translation, in which he deals with clairvoyance and divination by dreams.
· _ The great majority of the works of Alkindi translated into Latin are of an astrological _character.
His most strictly occult work is his treatise on· images of an astrological character.
He provides certain Saracen names for the seven planets and gives the Arabic names for the twenty-eight houses into which the circle of the zodiac is subdivided, A work ascribed to one Alcandrus, an 'astrologer, is found in two manuscripts of the eleventh century.
This writer is mentioned in Michrel Scot's " Introduction to Astrology " as the author of a book of fortune, which men• tions the quality of the signs and the planets ruling in them, · and Michael mentions that a similar method of divination is employed among the Arabs.
Later, in the twelfth century, a very large number of translations were made from Arabic books on astrology; and it is not too much to say that practically all later writers on arcane subjects were influenced by Arab learn• ing.