Traces of a Pahlavi Lexical and Technical Heritage in Medieval Latin through the Arabic Intermediation: ‘Miracles’, Doubts, Problems

The astonishing preservation of fragments of a Middle Persian Sprachgut surviving within the Medieval Latin astrological tradition can appear as something beyond any expectation and more probably as a message in a bottle, but still smelling very good like smoked Scottish whisky. Without denying the power of alternative haomic beverages, the matter I am going to discuss is serious, and shows the strong importance, also from the lexicographical point of view, of Western medieval astrological literature, in particular the one preserving Arabic material strongly based on earlier Pahlavi sources.