Postdoctoral Research Fellow Needed to Participate in “Sorcerer’s Handbook” Project

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BSD037/postdoctoral-research-fellow?fbclid=IwAR1nMXJqVwi0JhWfWffh05Ih0kQ1LJTQSW3yBFY5glGtdFExbuCAytth_j4

The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter wishes to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to participate in “A Sorcerer’s Handbook: Medieval Arabic Magic in Context,” awarded to Dr Emily Selove. This Leverhulme Trust funded post is available 01/11/2019. The successful applicant will transcribe and create draft translations of manuscripts of Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī’s Arabic grimoire, write scholarly articles about this subject, and aid the PI in editing a co-authored volume of essays about Sakkākī’s work.

Kitāb al-Shāmil (The Book of the Complete) is a technical manual containing a mixed collection of magical recipes and rituals. It includes instructions for creating talismans, for controlling jinn and devils, for causing sickness, for curing such magically-caused afflictions, and for calling upon the power of each of the planets. The power of God and phrases from the Qur’an are frequently invoked, but the texts in this collection claim to originate from famous Greek thinkers like Ptolemy and Hippocrates. Such Arabic texts concerned with astrological matters as well as the hidden properties of objects in the natural world were influential on European literary and scientific traditions. The translation of the title as The Book of the Complete is informed by a reading of the compiler’s introduction, which refers to the “perfect” scholars of the ancient world on which it purports to base its information, hence, “The book of the Perfect/Complete person”; it is possible that the title is a play on the similarly-titled 11th century book of magic al-Shāmil fī al-baḥr al-kāmil (Complete book of the Perfect Sea) by al-Ṭabasī.

Previous research on Sakkākī tends to centre on his influential book on language, Miftāḥ al-‘ulūm (The Key to the Sciences), often ignoring his reputation as a magician. Nevertheless, early biographical literature indeed credited him with the power to, for example, strike cranes down in mid flight with a magical inscription. Both Sakkākī’s linguistic and magical interests show his fascination with the power of language, and these interests will inform the literary style of translation of Sakkākī’s mysterious grimoire.

The Painters of the City: North Africa 1880-1920

An exhibition by Professor William Gallois

https://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/events/details/index.php?event=9327

This exhibition explores a mystery which also constitutes a unique moment in the history of art. In the last years of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, new forms of painting emerged on and around buildings in cities and towns across north Africa. They were identifiably related to existing cultural forms – especially tattoos , textiles and jewellery – but their sudden appearance in the form of murals and frescoes was unprecedented….

They took existing aesthetic and spiritual amuletic forms which were designed to safeguard individual bodies and homes, extending their scope into the collective, public sphere so as to save communities of believers across cities and the world. While such work was produced anonymously we can be sure that it was made by women, who had long held special aesthetic-religious responsibilities in north Africa. Protective art made by women was imbued with unique force in both Muslim and Jewish communities, and amongst Berbers, Tuaregs and Arabs. While their paintings may have long since faded (or been erased), what we might now learn from the artists of the city and their forgotten works?

ON MONDAY, 29 APRIL 2019 AT 7 P.M. COVENTRY CATHEDRAL, CHAPEL OF CHRIST THE SERVANT

On the occasion of the 60^th anniversary of the twin city relationship between Coventry and Dresden, the Dresden State Art Collections and the City of Dresden invite you warmly to the opening of an exhibition in the Coventry Cathedral

Invitation Coventry Cathedral

Please join us for a workshop on Magic and the Occult in Islam hosted by the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies’ Centre for the Study of Islam.

In honour of Professor Charles Burnett, a leading researcher in the field.

http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/iais/research/centres/csi/ 

March 20th
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter: Lecture Theatres One and Two

12:30-1:30: Lunch in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies Common Room

1:30-2:30: Professor Dionisius Agius: Magic in Malta and Opening Remarks

2:30-3:00: Dr. Michael Noble: ‘Attitudes to the weird and the wonderful: some reflections on Avicennan and Post-Avicennan thought’

3:00-3:30: Coffee and Tea

3:30-4:00: Dr. Liana Saif: ‘The Pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica: Preliminary observations’

4:00-4:30: Dr. Ceri Houlbrook: ‘Locking Love and Wishes: Padlock rituals in the Middle East’

4:30-5:00: Concluding Remarks and Discussion
 

Check out Catherine Rider’s new blog post about editing the Routledge History of Medieval Magic!

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/medievalstudies/

A day of artistic and academic discussion – Wed 24 Apr 2019 -Wed 24 Apr 2019

10am – 4.45pm, Reed Hall, University of Exeter, EX4 4QR. £30/35

This event is £30 with earlybird booking until 28 Feb, or £35 after (£25 OAPs and students)

Conference:

10am – 4.45pm (registration & coffee from 9.30am)
Reed Hall, University of Exeter, Devon, EX4 4QR, UK
£35 (£25 OAP’s and students)
£30 early bird booking until Thursday 28 February 2019
Book: 01626 832223 or in person at Devon Guild of Craftsmen

Organised by Devon Guild of Craftsmen, with support from the University of Exeter Arts and Culture team, this day-long event will bring academics and artists together to shed further light on the history of witchcraft in Exeter, Devon and beyond, and on the symbolism, imagery and practices that can still resonate strongly with us today.

https://www.crafts.org.uk/Events-Exhibitions/2019/Ev-19/Symposium-Persecution-and-Possibility-a-day-of

Trickery, Poetry, Intoxication: The Magic of Medieval Arabic Literature

Emily Selove (IAIS, Exeter)

MagiCog: Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Magic

Literature as Magic, Magic as Literature: Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī’s Complete Book and a Fragment of Spells

Dr. Emily Selove

Handbooks like that ascribed to the famous 13th-century scholar of language and magic, Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī’s Kitāb al-Shāmil wa-baḥr al-kāmil, do not themselves invite literary readings. This grimoire often displays all the literary charms of an ungrammatical cookbook; it is a technical manual—a mixed collection of magical recipes and rituals. It includes instructions for creating talismans, for contacting both jinn and devils, for causing hatred and sickness, for curing such magically caused afflictions, and for calling upon the power of each of the planets. As for previous research on Sakkaki, such studies tend to center on his influential book on language and rhetoric, Miftāḥ al-‘ulūm (The Key to the Sciences), often ignoring his reputation as a magician. Nevertheless, early biographical literature credited him with the power to, for example, strike cranes down in mid flight with a magical inscription. I will argue that both Sakkaki’s linguistic and magical interests show his fascination with the power of language. The power of language to alter the mind or create effects in the physical world is described as a kind of bewitchment in occult literature as well as in studies of language, not to mention in love poetry, and my own strategy in approaching magical texts is to read them with the techniques applied to poetry. I will also discuss some evidence of the practise of magic today, focusing on a mysterious 6-folio fragment of spells in Yale’s Beinecke library.

https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/whats-on/mes-seminar-series-michaelmas-2018/literature-magic-magic-literature-siraj-al-din-al