Arab-Islamic magic during the Middle Ages: An introduction
Magic in the Arab-Islamic world is a complex issue in nature, and there are as many attempts to define what magic is as people have written about it.
The very word for magic, siḥr, magic, is formed on the Arabic root ‘ س ح ر ’, this root conveys the meaning of spell, fascination, enchantment and spell. It appears about 60 times in the Qur’an with some of its lexical derivations, being in the suras of Mecca where it appears (or some of its derivatives) with more frequency.
Compared to Meccan period of Revelation, Medina suras contain fewer references to magic, but include the most famous Quranic statement about magic, and it does so through the story of the angels هَـارُوت وَمَـارُوت, Hārūt and Mārūt in the second sūrah and whose base is found in ancient Indo-Iranian traditions (Zoroastrism, Haurvatat and Ameretat)
The beginning of the verse, namely 2:102, leads us to the times of Solomon, and reads as follows:
’And they followed, [instead] what the demons recited in Solomon’s reign.
It was not Solomon who disbelieved, but the devils, teaching magic to the people and what had been revealed to the angels of Babylon, Hārūt and Mārūt. But the two angels do not teach anyone unless they say ‘’ we are a test, so don’t be disbelieving [practicing magic]‘
Regardless of the interpretation that can be given to this verse, and that indeed it was interpreted in many ways, it should be considered as the ‘locus classicus’ of Islamic exegesis regarding magic.
What is clear, in any case, is that the Qur’an does not explicitly condemn or prohibit the use of magic anywhere.
At a more practical and popular level we can even observe that in certain verses and even complete sūrat, such as the last two of the Holy Book, they have often been used for magical and, especially, prophylactic, protective purposes, and we should not fail to mention the extensive literature dedicated in medieval Islam to these ‘magical questions’ such as the first letters of the Qur'an, the names of the اصحاب الکهف aṣḥāb al-kahf, the “Companions of the Cave” in sūrah 18 الكهف, ‘al-Kahf’ or the 99 epithets of God.
Now, it is also true that we can find in Islamic orthodoxy a much less favorable judgment about magic and its practitioners, which in general have been considered a major threat to the community of believers.
The 9th-century traditionalist and scholar Tirmidhī, author of one of the aḥādīth six canonical collections in Sunni Islam, states, for example: ‘’The punishment for the magician is death by the sword’’. This type of condemnation was repeated for centuries by the vast majority of jurists and theologians who warned against the dangers of the siḥr, just as in the Christian Middle Ages magicians, sorcerers and witches were regularly accused, persecuted, sent to prison or executed.
Practitioners of magic, in general, were accused of بِدْعَة bidʿa that is, having brought heretical innovations, a very serious reproach according to Muslim orthodoxy., And yet, it can be affirmed that the majority of jurists and theologians, even the more traditional, they made an effort to distinguish between the different categories of magic, whose main objective in doing so was to have the intention of separating the allowed resources from the forbidden ones.
According to Toufic Fahd: ‘’ What is allowed is natural magic, known as white [positive] magic, which includes, among other enchantments, imaginary and hallucinatory phenomena produced by natural means, based on properties not connected with religion; psychic phenomena materialized by the use of filters and amulets activated by means of absorption or fumigation of powders and greases.
The practice of this magic is tolerated insofar as it does not cause harm to others. But when the magician influences nature in order to do damage, he exercises forbidden magic. This involves resorting to demonic inspiration, dark [negative] magic (…)’
In this field there has always been a huge gap between the theoretical views on magic professed by jurists and traditionalists of the Middle Ages on the one hand, and on the other hand, real practices, since they have been carried out continuously until nowadays by magicians, sorcerers and talisman specialists in many parts of Dār al-Islam. This can be explained by the divergence of views even among the best qualified representatives of legal theory, thus the 13th-century Andalusian author, Abû ‘Abdallâh al-Qurtubi, who amply commented on the famous Qur'anic passage from Hārūt and Mārūt, is known for adopting a much more tolerant and conciliatory position than its predecessors.
Another important reason must be in the many healing virtues that many of these practices should have. Legal theory of magic could be seen as a threat or danger to believers, but as long as they did not transgress the limits of the forbidden, a local magician with great esoteric knowledge was highly respected for his ability to contribute to the well-being of his neighbors.
Thus, a more or less complete vision of the materials and practices related to magic in the medieval Arab-Islamic world would require dealing with disciplines or concepts as diverse as amulets, talismans, illusionism, spells, magic squares, onomatomancy, dream interpretation and astrology, to name a few.
One of the most informative sources we have about magic in the Arab-Islamic world is مقدّمة ابن خلدون The Muqaddimah, by the fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldūn. In his Muqaddimah or Προλεγόμενα Prolegomena, Ibn Khaldūn leaves us an exceptionally detailed account of magic and talismans.
Defined as ‘’The sciences that show how human souls can be prepared to exert an influence on the elements, either without any help or with the help of celestial forces’’
Speaking of souls who have magical abilities, Khaldūn states that there are three levels:
‘’The former exercises its influence merely through the power of the mind, without any instrument or help. This is what philosophers call siḥr, magic.
The second exerts its influence with the help of the nature of the spheres and the elements, or with the help of the numbers.They are called talismans, ‘tilasmat’. It is a lower grade than the first group.The third group exerts its influence on the powers of the imagination (…) is what philosophers call prestidigitation’’. This group, prestidigitation, phantasmagoria and illusionism, isn’t considered real by Ibn Khaldūn, so no further mention will be made of it.
What the text seems to mean is that the highest level of magic is the only one that should be called sihr, and that it is reserved for those capable of resorting to supernatural powers without any instrument or intermediary.
As for the other level of magic, which implies the existence of a medium or intermediary to carry it out, it generally corresponds to theurgy and natural magic, since supernatural power is not required.
A particular form of natural magic is that of talismans, طلسم ‘tilasm’, from the ancient Greek τέλεσμα, religious rite, payment, in which inscriptions normally with astrological meaning are used as amulets to protect someone or some community against dangers such as manifestations understood as a result of the evil eye.
Several centuries before Ibn Khaldoun, in the introduction to the “Epistle to Magic”, the إخوان الصفا Ikhwān Al-Ṣafā, that is, the Brothers of Purity, give the following definition of sihr: “You must know, brother, that the essence of magic and its reality is everything through which the intellects are bewitched and everything that souls give themselves through speeches and actions that produce amazement, submission, attention, listening, consent, obedience or acceptance ”
Ikhwān Al-Ṣafā was the name adopted by a group of medieval Muslim scholars, who wrote an unparalleled encyclopedia at the time inside or outside the Islamic world. This takes the form of a corpus with approximately fifty epistles, where each one was dedicated to a type of knowledge, organized so that a suitably qualified person could advance through the noble sciences to the most ineffable wisdom. Who the Ikhwān were and where they lived is a question that is still debated, although it is increasingly clear that they were Neoplatonic philosophers who must have had some affinity with Ismailism.
The definition of Ikhwānan magic was taken by the Andalusian author of the غاية الحكيم Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, the Purpose of the Sage, a celestial magic treatise that would exert enormous influence in the West during the Renaissance, becoming known as Picatrix and inspiring thinkers and scholars, like Cornelius Agrippa.
It is because of this Latin adaptation known as Picatrix that the authorship of the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm and another treatise on alchemy, titled Rutbat al-ḥakīm, the Degree of the Wise, have been a problem until relatively recently, when in 1996 it was demonstrated that the author of the Purpose of the Wise was, in fact, Maslama Ibn Qāsim al-Qurṭubī, who traveled to the East in the first half of the 10th century, moreover, there are reasons to believe that Maslama is also the scholar who introduced the encyclopedic corpus of the Ikhwān Al-Ṣafā in al-Andalus for the first time.
The Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm is presented as a curious grimoire that, in addition to describing highly elaborate forms of rituals in which the spirits of the planets and other celestial beings are invoked, is striking for the extreme heterogeneity of its sources, most they are clearly oriental. The sources for this compilation appear to have been largely Arabic translations and texts of the Ismailism, Sabaism, astrology, alchemy, magic, and Hermeticism produced in the Middle East between the 9th and 10th centuries.
Another very important aspect of magic in the Arab-Islamic world was the magical interpretation of the Qur’an words and letters as sciences normally called عِلْم الْحُرُوف ‘Ilm al-Ḥurūf ’ or سِمة ‘Sīmiyā‘, from the Greek σημεία, sign, symbol.
The so called science of letters, believed to have originated from the ٱلْجَفْر al-Jafr, a Shi’ite divination system based on onomatomancy that inevitably reminds us of Qabbalah, that was developed later. This science of letters quickly developed three overlapping currents: a mystical, a philosophical, and an alchemical one.
For many medieval scholars who were interested in the science of letters, speech has not only an epistemological value, but an ontological value. That is, the words and therefore the letters not only provide information about things, but also reflect their inner nature, that is, their name reflects their being. Some thinkers went even further and affirmed that the name of things is not only a reflection, but its own nature, therefore, knowing its name is the same as knowing the thing itself.
This concept prompted medieval thinkers to develop systems of language analysis, classifying letters in different ways and according to various criteria.
The best known is the classification of letters according to the four elements: of the 28 letters of the Arabic Abjad, 7 belong to fire, 7 to air, 7 to water and 7 to earth, and which in turn, had certain elemental properties: 7 are warm, 7 are dry, 7 are cold and 7 are humid.
One of the most refined and sophisticated systems of analysis of things through names is found in the corpus of texts attributed to the alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, known in Europe for his latinized name, Geber. He postulated that since the names of things reflect their nature, it might be possible to know the exact composition of a thing in terms of elements and their properties thanks to its name. This method, called ilm al-mīzān, was the first step for Geber’s Elixir Theory.
The religious side of the science of letters developed in two forms, asmāʾu llāhi lḥusnā and fawātiḥ al-suwar
The asmāʾu llāhi lḥusnā, literally the Most Beautiful Names of God, are the 99 divine names, an Islamic tradition that attributes 99 names to God, which are the 99 ways to describe the different aspects of God. The opening of the sūrat, or the huruf muqatta’a, are mysterious letters or isolated groups of them found in the early 29 sūrat of the Qur’an.
The Prophet did not give any explanation on this and it gave rise to many speculations.
As it has been said, since letters have an ontological value, they not only allow us to know things, but also act on them through their names. This idea gave rise to the magic of letters, one of the broadest fields of the so-called science of letters.
The most famous figure in letter magic is undoubtedly, Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Yusuf al-Buni al-Maliki al-ifriqi, Ahmad al-Buni, who died in the early 13th century. This scholar is credited with a whole series of magical treatises that had a profound influence on magic in the Arab-Islamic world, not only in the academic world, but also, and perhaps mainly, at popular level.
However, recent studies have pointed out that the most famous and influential work attributed to Buni, the كتاب شمس المعارف ولطائف العوارف Shams al-Ma'arif wa Lata'if al-'Awarif, the Great Sun of Gnosis, is actually an apocryphal compilation. This treatise is a great synthesis of theoretical knowledge about the magic of letters. The letters themselves are considered as spiritual beings, linked to angels and through which it is possible to act on spiritual entities by their means, even to restrict the angels themselves.
To get a better idea of magic ramifications in the Arab-Islamic world, there is probably no better example than the seventeenth-century Turkish compiler and encyclopedist Hajji Khalifa, also known as Kâtip Çelebi.
“Kashf al-ẓunūn ’ un asāmī al-kutub wa-al-funūn ”, Opinion’s Scrutiny of the Names of Books and the Sciences’, includes under the title “siḥr” an astonishing variety of 14 disciplines among which divination, natural magic, properties of The Most Beautiful Names, of the numbers and of certain invocations, sympathetic magic, demonic conjuration, the enchantments, the evocation of spirits from the corporeal beings, invocation of the spirits of the planets, phylacteries, amulets, talismans, filters, the art of artifacts creation, the art of discovering frauds in conjurations, conjuring, and medicinal plants and herbs and their properties.
