Editors: Liana Saif, Francesca Leoni, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, and Farouk Yahya
Publisher: Brill, 2020
Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice brings together the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies and material culture. Its aim is not only to showcase the range of pioneering work that is currently being done in these areas, but also to provide a model for closer interaction amongst the disciplines constituting this burgeoning field of study. Furthermore, the book provides the rare opportunity to bridge the gap on an institutional level by bringing the academic and curatorial spheres into dialogue.
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Transliteration, Style, and Dates
Chapter 1 Introduction – Liana Saif & Francesca Leoni
Part 1 Occult Theories: Inception and Reception
Chapter 2 The Three Divisions of Arabic Magic – Charles Burnett
Chapter 3 New Light on Early Arabic Awfāq Literature – Bink Hallum
Chapter 4 A Study of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s Epistle on Magic, the Longer Version (52b) – Liana Saif
Chapter 5 Sabian Astral Magic as Soteriology in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Sirr al-maktūm – Michael Noble
Chapter 6 Lettrism and History in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī’s Naẓm al-sulūk fī musāmarat al-mulūk – Noah Gardiner
Chapter 7 Kāshifī’s Asrār-i qāsimī: A Late Timurid Manual of the Occult Sciences and Its Safavid Afterlife – Maria Subtelny
Part 2 Occult Technologies: From Instruction to Action
Chapter 8 The Kitāb Sharāsīm al-Hindiyya and Medieval Islamic Occult Sciences – Jean-Charles Coulon
Chapter 9 Toward a Neopythagorean Historiography: Kemālpaşazāde’s (d. 1534) Lettrist Call for the Conquest of Cairo and the Development of Ottoman Occult-Scientific Imperialism – Matthew Melvin-Koushki
Chapter 10 Power and Piety: Islamic Talismans on the Battlefield – Maryam Ekhtiar & Rachel Parikh
Chapter 11 Calligrams of the Lion of ʿAlī in Southeast Asia – Farouk Yahya
Chapter 12 A Stamped Talisman – Francesca Leoni
Chapter 13 Bereket Bargains: Islamic Amulets in Today’s “New Turkey” – Christiane Gruber
Chapter 14 Postscript: Cutting Ariadne’s Thread, or How to Think Otherwise in the Maze – Travis Zadeh
Index