Spellbound: Arabic and Persian Handbooks of Practical Magic

Friday, April 19

Location: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Room 121

See poster.

9:00–11:00am       Panel 1 | Material Transformations

Lillian McCabe, Ahmed Nur, Dominique Sirgy, Yale University
Selections from the Beinecke Collection

Emily Selove, University of Exeter
Transforming the Complete Book into the Book of the Complete

Chair: Travis Zadeh, Yale University

Location: Humanities Quadrangle 276

11:30am–1:00pm Panel 2 | Classifications

Kevin van Bladel, Yale University
“Ibn Farīghūn on the Occult Sciences”

Ahmed Nur, Yale University
“Ottoman Occult Interconnectedness: The View from Taşköprüzade’s Encyclopedia”

Chair: Jane Mikkelson, Yale University

2:00–3:30pm       Panel 3 | Intermediaries

 Valentina Grasso, Bard College
“Arabian Preternatural Beings: Jinn and Shayṭān before and after Islam”

Lyla Halsted, Davidson College
“Magic-Medicinal bowls and their Ephemeral Precursors: Broad-Spectrum Therapeutic Efficacy in al-Ṭabasī’s Shāmil

Chair: Shawkat Toorawa, Yale University

4:00–5:30pm       Panel 4 | The Matter of Rāzī and Sakkākī

Michael Noble, University of Exeter
“Astral Religion and Sacred Persian Kingship in the thought of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and Suhrawardī”

Lillian McCabe, Yale University
“Rāzī and Sakkākī(s) on Taskhīr

Chair: David Baldi, Yale University

Saturday, April 20

Location: Humanities Quadrangle 276

9:30–11:00am     Panel 5 | Magic on the Move 

Liana Saif, University of Amsterdam
“Islamicate Magic in the 12th Century: Hermetic, Islamic, and Jewish Entanglements”

Łukasz Piątak, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
“Beings of Light to Be Praised (and their Persian Nomina Barbara?): Parallels between Zoroastrian Yashts and al-Suhrawardī’s al-Wāridāt wa-l-Taqdīsāt

Chair: Sana Jamal, Yale University

11:30am–12:30pm       Panel 6 | Mandalas and Mantras

 Travis Zadeh, Yale University
“Demons, Deities, and Mysterious Vocabulary in Arabic and Persian Incantations”

Supriya Gandhi, Yale University
“Mantras from India to Syria and Back Again”
 
Chair: Christopher Minkowski,
Oxford University

1:30–3:00pm       Panel 7 | Persian Magicians

Matthew Melvin-Koushki, University of South Carolina
“A Sīmāwian-Sakkākian Manual of Boozing and Battling Magic: ʿAlī Ṣafī’s Boon for the Khan (1522) and the Democratization of Timurid-Safavid Court Occulture”

Daniel Sheffield, Princeton University
“The Magus and the Sorcerer: Magical Practices in Early Modern Zoroastrianism”

Chair: Dominique Sirgy, Yale University
 

3:30-5:00pm        Panel 8 | Mystics, Monarchs, and Everyday Life

Eva Orthmann, University of Göttingen
“The Forty One Names of God and Their Astonishing Effects: Muḥammad Ghauth and the Tradition of His Astro-Magic Practices.”

Dahlia Gubara, Koç University
“The Everyday Life of Ideas in an 18th-Century Occult Text”

Chair: Ojaswini Shekhawat, Yale University