Justin Marozzi

Muslim magic

Through works of outstanding beauty – from sacred shirts to geomanic dice – this Ashmolean Museum exhibition demonstrates how seamlessly the Islamic faith shaded into stranger traditions

In 1402, when the Turkic conqueror Temur, better known in the West as Tamerlane, was poised to do battle with the mighty Ottoman Sultan Bayazid I, the greatest power in the Muslim world, he called in the astrologers. Knowing which side their bread was buttered on, the court officials duly pronounced that the planets were auspiciously positioned and gave a green light to attack. Temur was victorious. Not for nothing was he known as lord of the ‘Fortunate Conjunction of the Planets’. Half a century later, in 1453, Bayazid’s great-grandson Mehmet II stood at the gates of Constantinople. Anxious to galvanise his siege-weary troops, he summoned court astrologers, diviners and holy men to do their business. They predicted Muslim victory over the perfidious Christians and rode through the Ottoman camp spreading the good news. On 29 May, the city that had resisted so many sieges finally fell and the Byzantine Empire breathed its last.

If these are historical reminders that the Islamic world was broad enough to accommodate traditional, pagan and pre-Islamic practices at the highest level, the Ashmolean’s exhibition Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural provides sumptuous visual evidence of the intersection between Islamic faith and superstition over the centuries. Here are the miniature and the monumental, richly decorated Qurans and finely wrought geomantic tablets and dice, astrolabes, magico-medicinal bowls, seals and scrolls, gemstones and jewellery, each artefact charged with religious and supernatural power.

Leaving aside the argument that all religion is a form of superstition, the exhibition demonstrates, through works of art of outstanding beauty, how seamlessly the Islamic faith has shaded into the supernatural and occult, especially at the popular level.

The leading light in the world of Islamic ‘magic’ was Ahmad ibn Ali al-Buni, a 12th-century author whose Luma’at al-nuraniyya (Brilliant Lights) investigated the occult properties of the 99 names of God and advised the faithful how they could harness their supernatural power through amulets and talismans.

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