“Indeed, some eloquence is magic,” the Prophet is reported to have said. The accompanying stories, however, make it clear that he meant magic in a metaphorical sense. The commentators of the hadith agree: Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (15th century), in his commentary on al-Bukhari’s Sahih, recorded various earlier debates about this and related hadiths which show that while the reality of magic itself was a matter of controversy, there was a consensus in the case of speech. Eloquence is unanimously ranked under metaphorical magic, in particular, under “what resembles magic” due to its ability to “win the hearts of people.” Thus, rather than having any impact on reality, speech merely convinces and persuades. Medieval commentators of poetry held that the many stories of poets taking their inspiration from shaytans and jinns should also be understood metaphorically. Eloquence, according to these commentators, is innate to the Arabs rather than something acquired through inspiration. By the 9th century, writers like al-Jahiz saw magic as a mere deception and considered fools those who believed poetry to come from jinns. This paper explores the beliefs of those ‘fools’ and ‘deceived,’ and argues that their view of speech as something inspired and directly affecting reality was, in fact, widespread in the early Islamic period. The paper starts with the exploration of hadith, fiqh, and adab to trace the development of this position. We can see, for example, that al-Bukhari himself included the above hadith in the section “On Medicine,” along with other medical and magical practices—thus providing us with an indication that the hadith spoke of a concrete, reality-affecting magic. This is followed by a literary analysis of narratives of encounters early Islamic and Umayyad poets with jinns and shaytans. Here, I will highlight the similarities between these accounts and Qur'anic revelation, thereby demonstrating that these poets, like Muhammad, claimed an actual inspiration. Furthermore, the various groups in this period who held beliefs in the actual power of the word, such as the mughiriya, will be discussed. Finally, the texts at hand will be situated in their broader context of magical and divinatory practices of the Late Antique Near East. In doing so, this paper shows that the conception of speech as inspired and reality affecting was the norm rather than the exception.

In the introduction to her volume Magic and Divination in Early Islam, Emilie Savage-Smith recommends that future researchers of the poorly-understood field of esoteric magic tackle the question of “To what extent did the ideas expressed in the magical/divinatory literature invade or reflect the realms of poetry, history, biography, and storytelling?” (xliv). This presentation will demonstrate that not only did magical literature “invade or reflect” these literary genres, but that in many cases, they can be said to be the same thing. Poetry and its bewitching eloquence are often described as a kind of “licit magic,” and this is more than a metaphor, as will be shown with reference not only to definitions of magic found, for example, in Ghayat al-hakim, and in scholarly works like Bürgel's Feathers of Simurgh, but also to Jonathan Culler’s famous analysis of the centrality of apostrophe to lyric poetry. As for prose, the use of saj adds a powerful hypnotic quality to the speech of the maqamat’s tricksters as they ensnare their listeners, just as it gives the magician power over the spirits that he summons. It will also be shown that astrological knowledge, like medical knowledge, was likely to have been part of the learned writer’s basic vocabulary in the medieval period, and therefore can be found in genres that our modern expectations might mis-lead us to believe to be quite distant from “scientific” concerns. Lastly, the possibility that obscene or satirical literature could have an apotropaic force in Arabic (as in Greek and Latin), will be explored. Robert Elliot and others have proposed a magical origin to satirical speech, but can scatological humour be used not only to stain and wound the enemy, but to ward off the evil eye, like the phallic amulets and their literary parallels found in Ancient Rome? This presentation will examine both the literary qualities of magical texts and the magical qualities of literary texts in its attempt to answer these questions.

Conventional narratives of the Baghdad Translation Movement (ca. 8th to 10th centuries) all too often exclude the role of the occult. Moreover, while they highlight the role of Christians as intermediaries in the translation of philosophical texts from Greek into Arabic (often via Syriac), little attention has been given to how Christian intellectuals continued to engage in such activities for the purposes of their own communities. This paper focuses on what purports to be a translation from Syriac to Arabic of a Pseudo-Aristotelian epistle on alchemy. Its translator and commentator is Abdisho bar Brikha (d. 1318), a Nestorian churchman active in northern Mesopotamia during the Ilkhanid period. Better known for his Syriac poetry, few have studied him in light of his many Arabic works. My contribution focuses on two salient features in Abdisho’s preface to this unedited text. Firstly, I discuss his reasons for embarking on the translation. Abdisho informs us that he chose to work on the epistle because it outlines the procedures and methods of alchemy in clear and accessible terms—unlike more conventional alchemical works, which often employ ciphers when describing the instruments and materials of the craft. Thus, I situate his activities within a broader intellectual context in which other alchemists of the thirteenth century sought to disclose the mysteries of the craft through systematic commentaries and primers. Secondly, I examine the quasi-historical narratives employed by Abdisho to explain the transmission of the epistle. In addition to mentioning various legendary authorities of Arabic alchemy (e.g. Hermes Trismegistus, 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, and Heraclius), our author emphasises the role of East Syriac Christians in passing down alchemical knowledge through the ages. In doing so, I argue, he engages in a form of communal narrativization and apologetics intended to place the Church of the East at the centre of alchemical production in the Islamicate world. Finally, I discuss the manuscript tradition of Abdisho’s translation. Though originally written in Garshuni (Arabic written in the Syriac script), presumably for a Christian readership, the work would later be copied in the Arabic script by Muslim scribes, appearing in manuscripts as widespread as northern India. The dissemination of this text, I contend, indicates how Christian translations of Syriac texts were still able to have an impact on the learned culture of the Islamicate world long after the Translation Movement—at least in the sphere of alchemy.

The Mamluk period (1260-1517) witnessed an unprecedented swell in alchemical literature. Departing from his important predecessor, Abu al-Qasim al-‘Iraqi (fl. 13th cent.), the Egyptian alchemist ‘Izz al-Din Aydemir al-Jildaki renovated and systematized alchemical theory and practice in the 14th century. To be sure, al-Jildaki staunchly defended the efficacy of metallic transmutation, but he was also familiar the Ayyubid mint manual of Ibn Ba‘ra. However, at the same time, alchemists occasionally had reason to fear government surveillance. Mamluk-era chronicles contain grisly accounts of what befell alchemists accused of zaghal, adulterating or counterfeiting the coinage. Regulation of currency is among the most important responsibilities of a government. In the pre-modern Islamic world, that responsibility also entailed the acquisition of specie metals in ever larger amounts. Most lands were not blessed with native mineral wealth, and therefore they were forced to rely on international trade for their bullion, always a potential source of insecurity. In the Mamluk sultanate, the supply of available bullion never slaked the demand of the mints. While the numismatic history of the Mamluks is today fairly well explored and developed, scholarship has left the metallurgical expertise of the period largely unexplored. What kinds of metallurgic equipment and skills were required, and available, for the production of coin alloys with precision? How well did the alchemists' skill sets fit that mold? Did the Mamluk state, desperate for specie metal, employ alchemists to transmute base metals in an attempt to bypass the import market? Outside of the state's control, could alchemists have successfully counterfeited Mamluk coinage, and if so, to what extent? This paper will attempt to survey the relevant alchemical literature and the metallurgic skill of the Mamluk period to detect the neglected connections between alchemy and the economy and to begin to answer many of these questions.