Magic and Divination in the Medieval Islamic Middle East PDF

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History Compass 9/8 (2011): 622–633, 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2011.00781.x

Magic and Divination in the Medieval Islamic Middle East Edgar W. Francis* Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Abstract

For over a hundred years, Western historians have been investigating magic and divination in the Middle East. The earliest scholarship on these topics was written at a time when the scholars in other fields presented magic either as inaccurate science or misplaced, antisocial religion. Even though such approaches have been harshly criticized in history and the other social sciences, historians of the Middle East have ignored these debates and have either persisted in using outdated frameworks or have simply ignored questions of how to define and locate magic and divination altogether. As a result, the study of magic as practiced in the Muslim world validated a certain view of the ‘Orient’ as inherently backward and inferior to the Occident. At the same time, many scholars have also conflated the study of contemporary observed practice with medieval primary sources. This is changing. At the same time that there has been a growing interest in the history of magic and divination in all societies, historians of Middle Eastern magic and divination have started to realize that, far from being some sort of primitive aberration, magic is and has been a very common part of life in all societies.

I Introduction Most people today think of magic as something unreal. They associate it with stage illusionists or perhaps the wise wizards and evil witches of folklore (and of blockbuster movies). However, magic and divination were very real to Muslims of the Middle East in the Middle Ages. That is to say, different individuals claimed they had the power to influence the world or gain hidden knowledge by manipulating unseen (occult) forces. Here, I will refer to such activities as ‘magic’ and ‘divination’, respectively. People were so convinced of these magicians and diviners that they sought out these men and women, paid for their services, copied their books, and in some cases killed these magicians for practicing their arts. This is not to say that these beliefs and practices were restricted to the Middle East, and it especially should not be taken to suggest that these practitioners and their clients were somehow different or less rational. The historical study of magic is expanding, and this scholarship continues to emphasize that magical beliefs and practices have been a part of almost every human society. Historians of the Middle East have been slow to pay attention to this scholarship dealing with magic in other regions and other eras. However, there are historians of magic in the Islamic Middle East who are embracing new easy of thinking about the topic, and some of these scholars are explicitly critical of earlier authorities. II Primary Sources for Study There is such abundant evidence for the study of magic and divination in the medieval Middle East that new scholarship frequently concludes with calls for further study.1 One ª 2011 The Author History Compass ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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set of sources consist of contemporary or near-contemporary reports describing magicians, diviners, and their activities. H: adı¯ th2 reports and the Quran itself mention occult practices, as do different histories going back to the era of the Prophet. As discussed below, Muslim jurists and other intellectuals debated the nature and permissibility of magic, and in doing so described contemporary practices. Legal manuals described how to regulate the businesses of astrologers and other diviners. Even Spanish records can tell historians about the magical practices of Moriscos brought before the Inquisition in post-Reconquista Spain. Arabic bibliographies such as the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadı¯m (fl. 987 CE) describe occult writings along with other works. Similarly, biographies, encyclopedias also provide similar information on magical writings and authors. The richest resources are materials produced by and for magicians and diviners themselves (and their clients). However, this material must be approached with care. It can be difficult to tell when amulets or talismans were originally produced, or for what purpose.3 Similarly, the authorship of many grimoires is questionable and has been the subject of considerable debate. (By ‘grimoire’, I mean books or manuals written by and for magicians and diviners.4) Disputes over the authorship of such materials should not be surprising. As Owen Davies has pointed out, many European grimoires were falsely attributed to famous authors.5 Similarly, the debates over the authenticity of the Jabirian corpus in Arabic alchemical literature are well known. An excellent example of a disputed grimoire is Ibn Wah: shı¯yah’s Filah: at al-Nabat: ¯ı yah (Nabataean Agriculture). Ab u Bakr Ah: mad ibn ‘Alı¯ ibn Qays Ibn Wah: shı¯yah (d. ca. 951 CE) was one of the most important and prolific magical authors of the early Islamic era. According to Ibn al-Nadı¯m, Ibn Wah: shı¯yah translated some thirteen works dealing with the occult and special properties of materials, and wrote two of his own. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the authenticity of Ibn Wah: shı¯yah’s translations – particularly al-Filah: ah al-Nabat: ¯ıyah – and even his very existence have been subject to debate. At one extreme, David Chwolson dated al-Filah: ah al-Nabat: ¯ıyah to the fourteenth-century BCE. At the other, Alfred von Gutschmid and Theodor No¨ldeke asserted that the text was a forgery from the Islamic era, dating from no earlier than 700 CE and perhaps as late as the fourth ⁄ tenth century.6 Scholarship in the last 70 years, most recently by Toufic Fahd, has sought to re-establish the text as an authentic compilation of ancient agronomy and occult science and Ibn Wah: shı¯yah’s place as its translator into Arabic.7 There is less controversy regarding the corpus attributed to Ah: mad ibn ‘Alı¯ al-B unı¯ (d. ca. 1225 CE). These are popular and influential examples of grimoires that draw on the power of Islamic symbols such as the Names of God or verses of the Quran or appeal to Islamic sources (angels, God, etc.). Jaime Cordero has compiled a list of 70 works attributed to him.8 However, several different authors have – more or less independently – determined that many of the writings attributed to al-B unı¯ are not, in fact, authentic.9 For his part, Jan Witkam has coined the term ‘Corpus Bunianam’ to describe the materials attributed to al-B unı¯,10 since the question of actual authorship of these works must remain uncertain for the time being. Nearly all of the sources mentioned above are written in Arabic. Up until now, there has been very little study of Persian or Turkish primary sources.11 III Historical Overview Using the above-mentioned Arabic sources, historians have described how different practices were current at different periods in Middle Eastern history.12 Toufic Fahd’s La divination arabe is one of the most comprehensive examples of this kind of history. Not only did Fahd seek to describe every kind of divination attested in Arabic from the pre-Islamic ª 2011 The Author History Compass ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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period up through the Middle Ages, but he also organized this material in the form of a continuous narrative of such practices. With regard to the Jahilı¯yah (i.e., pre-Islamic Arabia), Fahd described all the different kinds of diviners attested from this period. These included the kahin, the rabb, the dhu ilah, the sadin, the h: azı¯ , the ‘arraf, the h: akam, and the kahin-sayyid.13 At the same time, Fahd acknowledged the difficulties inherent in such a project. As early as the Abbasid period, historians could not clearly distinguish among these different practitioners14 and any description of the Jahilı¯yah must cope with the difficulty in determining the reliability of sources describing that period.15 Despite these difficulties, Fahd concluded that these different diviners were inspired by a host of divine and semi-divine spiritual beings. Similarly, examination of Islamic sacred sources suggests that the pre-Islamic Arabs believed in the power of different kinds of magicians to help or harm. Fahd concluded that with the advent of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam, there could be no other divine source of inspiration or power besides Allah (God). This brought an end to some forms of magic and divination while others flourished.16 As will be discussed below, there was (and is) still a vigorous debate about whether or not such practices were actually permissible under Islam. Fahd also observed that divinatory techniques dating from the Jahilı¯yah which persisted after the advent of Islam appear to have rely on mechanical rather than spiritual methods.17 These techniques included dream-interpretation, some forms of omen interpretation, physiognomy, and geomancy. Physiognomy (Ar. firasah) refers to divination based on an individual’s physical characteristics. Geomancy (Ar. ‘ilm al-khat: :t , ‘ilm al-ramal) involved tracing a number of dots in sand or on a tablet and then subjecting them to a number of complex operations in order to answer the petitioner’s question.18 Another significant development in the history of magic in the Muslim Middle East came in the ninth-century CE. Following the Islamic conquests, the new rulers sponsored the translation of many ‘foreign sciences’ from Greek, Syriac, and other languages into Arabic. Magic and divination (as well as alchemy) were among the ‘foreign sciences’ translated in this period.19 Other grimoires and material objects explicitly appealed to God, the saints, the angels, Muhammad, and (in Shiite materials) the Imam ‘Alı¯ and other members of Muhammad’s holy family.20 Ibn al-Nadı¯m’s Fihrist suggests that these forms of magic were used in the ninth-century CE or earlier,21 but most surviving material dates from the twelfth-century CE and later. In fact, the most extensive physical and documentary evidence for Arabic magic as a whole comes from that era.22 IV Examinations of Islamic Perspectives on Magic As suggested above, Muslim jurists and other intellectuals debated the nature of such phenomena and whether or not they were permissible. Some modern scholars have presented the judgments of particular jurists or Islamic scholars regarding magic, astrology, or other occult practices.23 Others have examined these debates and Islamic sacred sources to determine the Islamic position on magic and divination.24 This has been more difficult than initially imagined. G. H. Bousquet’s ‘Fiqh et sorcellerie: Petite contribution l’e´tude de la sorcellerie en Islaˆm’, emphasized that Islamic jurisprudence presents a worldview in which magic is very real and some forms of supernatural appeal are forbidden, even on penalty of death.25 In La divination arabe, Toufic Fahd pointed out that some forms of supernatural appeal were clearly permitted and that many medieval Muslim authorities sought to place divination ª 2011 The Author History Compass ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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and magic along a continuum of supernatural perception and ability that included not only magicians and diviners, but also saints and prophets.26 In other articles, Fahd explored further nuances in these concepts. For example, sih: r – the Arabic term most commonly translated for ‘magic’ – could have a variety of meanings, from harmful witchcraft to sleight of hand, to particularly fine poetry.27 Beyond these observations, it is worth noting that the value judgments attached to practices could vary widely – whether the term sih: r was used or not. For example, Ibn al-Nadı¯m distinguished ‘praiseworthy’ and ‘blameworthy’ magic; Ibn Khaldun condemned al-B unı¯ for witchcraft, while Sufi biographers praised the same man as a great saint and mystic. Perhaps Fahd’s best observation regarding the Islamic position on magic was that the source material is confused and contradictory.28 This should come as no surprise. As Michael Bailey has pointed out, magic is a contested term within societies just as much as it is among outside researchers.29 V Western Theories of Magic and Their Influence In order to understand how magic has been a ‘contested’ term among modern Middle East scholars, it is necessary to review the earliest attempts by Western scholars to understand magic and divination. Early theories of magic essentially described it as the negative mirror-image of a more valued practice. J. G. Frazer essentially described magic as an early, failed attempt to understand and control the world.30 For Marcel Mauss, magic was the negative, mirror-image of religion; whereas religion was public and social, magic was private and anti-social.31 Given the above assumptions regarding the nature of magic, the practice of magic was assumed to be restricted to certain ‘primitives’. Critics of these approaches have noted that Frazer, Mauss, and their disciples essentially validated the prejudices of European, Christian scholars as universally applicable methods of understanding concepts such as ‘magic’, ‘divination’, ‘science’, and ‘religion’ in non-European societies. In particular, some have noted that these kinds of scholarly conceptions and descriptions of magic were used ‘to categorize and control native peoples’.32 Others have even questioned whether ‘magic’ is even a useful category, or if it is such a prejudicial term that it tells more about the researcher than the topic of study. While the history of these evolving approaches to the study of magic is a fascinating subject in and of itself, such a topic is beyond the scope of this article. Fortunately, there is an abundant literature on the topic for the interested reader.33 These theories and attitudes have strongly influenced historians of Middle Eastern magic. The earliest scholarship on the topic dates from the era of Frazer and Mauss. Many later scholars have ignored the ongoing controversies among social scientists about the value of these approaches. For example, Edmond Doutte´ wrote Magie et religion dans l’afrique du nord in 1909 with the explicit purpose of giving a case study of Islamic phenomena based on the most current anthropological and sociological studies of his era – i.e., Frazer and Mauss.34 Similarly, H. A. Winkler’s Siegel und Charaktere in der Muhammadanischen Zauberei (1930) gives a detailed history and description of different magical signs and alphabets often found in Arabic grimoires and talismans from this era, namely the ‘seven signs’ (or, as they are apocryphally known, the ‘Seven Signs of Solomon’) and another set of symbols called ‘ring letters’ (AKA ‘lunette letters’). While the scope of Winkler’s work is impressive, his ª 2011 The Author History Compass ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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interpretation of these symbols in terms of the ‘primitive’ mentalities inherent to magic are not particularly useful.35 I have already mentioned how comprehensive and useful La divination arabe is. At the same time, Toufic Fahd relied on Frazer and Mauss in laying out his (Fahd’s) definitions of magic, divination, and religion.36 His conclusions were also influenced by Frazer’s and Mauss’ assumptions regarding the evolution and development of magic, divination, and religion.37 Similarly, much of Fahd’s analysis in La divination arabe is couched in terms of fixed and unchanging ‘Islamic’ and ‘Semitic characteristics.38 Even bibliographic scholarship without an explicit thesis can make an argument in the way that it presents the material. R. Lemay has criticized Sezgin’s Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums (GAS) for its ‘triumphalist’ approach to occult literature. That is to say, Sezgin only valued Arabic occult literature insofar as it produced knowledge that corresponds with modern, scientific ideas of what is true and useful.39 Similarly, he has criticized Manfred Ullmann’s Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam for its ‘positivist’ attitude toward the study of magic.40 Ullmann’s work is certainly thorough. In Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, he presented a comprehensive list of Arabic authors and texts in a variety of occult fields – alchemy, astrology, agronomy, and ‘magic’. However, he framed this in terms of a contrast between the ‘irrational’ and ‘rational’ sciences. In Lemay’s view, both the ‘triumphalist’ and ‘positivist’ approaches are ahistorical because they do not evaluate occult works (and their relationship with ‘scientific’ ones) in terms of how they were understood at the time they were written.41 VI Historical Sources and Anthropological Observations Another problem is that many scholars have combined contemporary observations from their own era with study of medieval texts. This may have come from assumptions that the ‘Orient’ was unchanging in various respects, so study of how magic was practiced in the modern world of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries could be used as evidence for what had been practiced in the middle ages (and vice versa). For example, Edmond Doutte´’s Magie et religion dans l’Afrique du Nord includes insightful descriptions of several medieval magical texts.42 However, Doutte´’s descriptions must be used with caution, since they are mixed with observations of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century practice. Even scholars writing later in the twentieth century combined their evidence in this manner. For example, Kriss and Kriss-Heinrich’s Volksglaube im Bereich des Islam (Wiesba˘ awhary’s dissertation ‘Die Gottesnamen im magische Gebraden, 1960), Mohammed El-G uch in den al-Buni zugeschriebenen Werken’, (Bonn, 1968), and Dorothe´e Anna Maria Pielow’s Die Quellen der Weisheit (Hildesheim, 1995) all combined discussions of the Corpus Bunianam with discussions of modern practice. In all fairness, it is true that medieval Arabic grimoires were (and still are) published and used in modern practice. (The Corpus Bunianam is an excellent example.) However, one must be very careful when describing the modern uses of medieval texts, so that the original context of those texts is not lost. Furthermore, despite these problems – and those mentioned earlier – this scholarship is still highly useful. I have already mentioned the value of Fahd’s La divination arabe. Similarly, the works of Doutte´, Winkler, and Ullmann all are useful guides to the Arabic source material. They simply must be used with caution. ª 2011 The Author History Compass ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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VII Understanding Magic as Ubiquitous A number of scholars have taken a very different approach, arguing that, far from being some sort of primitive aberration, magic is and has been a very common part of life in all societies. I have already mentioned R. Lemay’s criticism of Sezgin and Ullman...