Evolution of the views on the Moon in Arab-speaking Medieval society

For decades, some branches of medieval Muslim cosmology, including astrology, were considered insufficiently academic, and commonly they received less attention than they worth, as a result, entire scientific layers turned out to be not much studied. Within the framework of this study, the authors attempted to highlight one of the aspects of the cosmological system - the approaches of scientists of the Arab-Muslim world to the Moon - covering various traditions, regions, eras (within the “classical” period of development of Islamic medieval science). On the basis of seven treatises and comparative typological methods, the features of both the “academic” (astronomy) and “mystical” (astrology) schools were revealed, and an attempt was made to combine the features of both of them within a single system. Despite the fact that, as seems, astrology should involve a wide variety of approaches and solutions, the authors managed to show that the Moon is found only among astronomers as an independent and valuable object of research. At the same time, aspects of its consideration and methods of scientific description vary widely. Astrological science assumed the use of the Moon only as a tool in the construction of tables and systems, and over the centuries has undergone little change. Of particular interest in the study was the appeal to the work of Abu al-Abbas alFarghani (IX cent.) and Abdul-Hasan al-Isfahani (XIV cent.), little known to the Russian reader.