On Solar Revolutions, Part II, Abu Mashar, trans., Robert H.Schmidt, Project Hindsight, Medieval Astrology Track Vol. II, The Phaser Foundation Inc., 532 Washington Street, Cumberland MD 21502, 1999, paperback, 87 pp.

Robert Schmidt’s English language translation of Abu Mashar’s On Solar Revolutions is taken from David Pingree’s critical Greek edition. Part II (Part I has yet to be published) includes Treatise III, dealing with the ‘circumambulation and the distribution and the distributor and the star that participates with the distributor’, Treatise IV on the firdar, or planetary periods, Treatise V concerning planetary ingresses and the sole surviving section of Treatise IX on planetary rulers of days and hours. In his preface (p. vii) Schmidt summarises Abu Mashar’s position; he ‘systematically examines the solar return (the “change-over of the year”) against the background of the natal chart and in the context of a hierarchy of “time-lords”, or planetary rulers of different intervals of time in the native’s life, although he reserves that term for one kind of ruler - namely, the domicile lord of the profected Ascendant’.