Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice: (140 Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East)

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. Contributors include: Charles Burnett, Jean-Charles Coulon, Maryam Ekhtiar, Noah Gardiner, Christiane Gruber, Bink Hallum, Francesca Leoni, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Michael Noble, Rachel Parikh, Liana Saif, Maria Subtelny, Farouk Yahya, and Travis Zadeh.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations and Tables Notes on Contributors Transliteration, Style, and Dates 1 Introduction  Liana Saif and Francesca Leoni Part 1 Occult Theories: Inception and Reception 2 The Three Divisions of Arabic Magic  Charles Burnett 3 New Light on Early Arabic Awfāq Literature  Bink Hallum 4 A Study on the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s Epistle on Magic, the Longer Version (52b)  Liana Saif 5 Sabian Astral Magic as Soteriology in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s al-Sirr al-maktūm  Michael Noble 6 Lettrism and History in ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī’s Naẓm al-sulūk fī musāmarat al-mulūk  Noah Gardiner 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 8 The Kitāb Sharāsīm al-hindiyya and Medieval Islamic Occult Sciences  Jean-Charles Coulon 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 10 Power and Piety: Islamic Talismans on the Battlefield  Maryam Ekhtiar and Rachel Parikh 11 Calligrams of the Lion of ʿAlī in Southeast Asia  Farouk Yahya 12 A Stamped Talisman  Francesca Leoni 13 Bereket Bargains: Islamic Amulets in Today’s “New Turkey”  Christiane Gruber 14 Postscript: Cutting Ariadne’s Thread, or How to Think Otherwise in the Maze  Travis Zadeh Index

About the Author :
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).

Review :
“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).