Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice

Liana Saif (Ph.D. University of London, 2012) is a research associate at the Warburg Institute (London). She is an intellectual historian specializing in medieval Islamicate occult sciences and Islamic esotericism. She also conducts research on the entanglement and exchange of esoteric and occult ideas and practices between the Latin-West and the Islamicate world in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Francesca Leoni (Ph.D. Princeton, 2008) is Assistant Keeper and Curator of Islamic Art at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. She has published on wide-ranging topics, including Persian manuscript painting, eroticism and the occult in Islamicate visual arts. Matthew Melvin-Koushki (Ph.D. Yale, 2012) is Associate Professor and McCausland Fellow of History at the University of South Carolina. He specializes in early modern Islamicate intellectual and imperial history, with a philological focus on the theory and practice of the occult sciences in Timurid-Safavid Iran and the broader Persianate world to the nineteenth century, and a disciplinary focus on history of science, history of philosophy and history of the book.Farouk Yahya (Ph.D. SOAS, University of London, 2013) is Research Associate at this university. He has published on Southeast Asian magic, divination and art, including Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts (Brill, 2016).

“In many ways, this is the most important single publication on Islamic occult sciences in several years. Much can be said in praise of the collection: […] The articles are mostly thorough, and their bibliographies are extensive and useful tools for anyone interested in these topics. The research is based on a very good use of primary sources, which are not always easy to understand. […] this volume is a must for scholars working in the field, and it makes major steps forward in our understanding of Islamic occult sciences.” Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila in Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations (2022). “The volume is a pioneering contribution both in regard to the individual papers, but also in regard to the overall subject. Consequently, it will open up new avenues for further research, having established many junctures with other disciplines dealing with the European but also the West and South Asian history of religions.” Franz Winter in Religious Studies Review (2022).

• List of Illustrations and TablesNotes on ContributorsTransliteration, Style, and Dates1 IntroductionLiana Saif and Francesca LeoniPart 1 Occult Theories: Inception and Reception2 The Three Divisions of Arabic MagicCharles Burnett3 New Light on Early Arabic Awfāq LiteratureBink Hallum4 A Study on the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s Epistle on Magic, the Longer Version (52b)Liana Saif5 Sabian Astral Magic as Soteriology in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Sirr al-maktūmMichael Noble6 Lettrism and History in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī’s Naẓm al-sulūk fī musāmarat al-mulūkNoah Gardiner7 Kāshifī’s Asrār-i qāsimī: A Late Timurid Manual of the Occult Sciences and Its Safavid AfterlifeMaria SubtelnyPart 2 Occult Technologies: From Instruction to Action8 The Kitāb Sharāsīm al-hindiyya and Medieval Islamic Occult SciencesJean-Charles Coulon9 Toward a Neopythagorean Historiography: Kemālpaşazāde’s (d. 1534) Lettrist Call for the Conquest of Cairo and the Development of Ottoman Occult-Scientific ImperialismMatthew Melvin-Koushki10 Power and Piety: Islamic Talismans on the BattlefieldMaryam Ekhtiar and Rachel Parikh11 Calligrams of the Lion of ʿAlī in Southeast AsiaFarouk Yahya12 A Stamped TalismanFrancesca Leoni13 Bereket Bargains: Islamic Amulets in Today’s “New Turkey”Christiane Gruber14 Postscript: Cutting Ariadne’s Thread, or How to Think Otherwise in the MazeTravis ZadehIndex