Shaykh Abu Hassan calls himself a 'spiritual doctor.' He says he can heal infertility, obesity and unofficially performs 'love magic' and exorcism. Because he doesn't engage in 'black magic' (i.e. he doesn't intentionally harm anyone), he claims that his work is Islamically permissible and even describes his craft as an 'Islamic science.' He substantiates the existence and power of magic and jinn by quoting the Qur'an. Moreover, he recites Qur'anic verses and appeals to the twelve Imams when performing 'spiritual labor' for his clients. For this paper, I examine precisely how the shaykh's legitimacy and authority are represented and negotiated. I posit that the shaykh's specific kind of heterodoxy is enabled by the peculiarity of the space in which he operates. Though the shaykh himself is an Iraqi Twelver Shi'i from Baghdad, he had been living and working in Sayyida Zaynab, Syria, for just over two years when I conducted fieldwork there in the fall of 2009. While Twelver Shi'ism constitutes a small minority in Syria, Sayyida Zaynab is an exception. The shrine-town of Sayyida Zaynab, the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad, is peripheral both socially and religiously: The shrine-town is a recently established center of Shi'i learning and pilgrimage and thus, it attracts students and visitors from Iran, Afghanistan, the Arabian Gulf and South Asia. However, the town has also served as a refugee camp for Palestinians, displaced Syrians from the Golan Heights and more recently, Iraqis. Similar to the shrine-town's overall population, the shaykh's customers are a mixed crowd. They include Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis and Gulf Arabs, Twelver Shi'is, Sunnis and even Christians. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of those who seek his help are women: young women, older women, Shi'i seminary students and even Sunni housewives. Based on extensive fieldwork in Sayyida Zaynab, this paper draws not only on ethnographic examples of shaykh Abu Hassan's performances, but also demonstrates how otherwise 'orthodox' women appropriate heterodox, magical practices on the periphery. Thereby, it also analyzes the relationships between the center and the periphery, Islamic orthodoxy and popular heterodoxy (including questions of 'orthopraxy' and 'heteropraxy'), and a Shi'i spiritual doctor's claim to religious authority and legitimacy.