Spellbound: Arabic and Persian Handbooks of Practical Magic
Friday, April 19
Location: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Room 121
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