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Gazing at the Sun Remarks on the Egyptian Magician Al

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Gazing at the Sun Remarks on the Egyptian Magician Al GAZING AT THE SUN REMARKSON THE EGYPTIAN MAGICIAN AL-BUNI , AND HIS WORK TanTust Witkam' TheCorpus Bunianum Whoever leafsthrough the editionsof the works of the Egyptianmagi- 'Ah cian Atrmad b. b. Yusuf al-Buni (d. 62211225)is bound to be soon confused.In his searchfor somestructure in the author'sargument, the readerwill insteadfind numerousrepetitions, and not seldomwill he discoverthat he is readingwhat provesto be a secondor third handling of issuesthat havealready been the subjectof earlier discussions,even in the very samework by al-Buni which he has at hand. The more one readsin al-Buni'spublished works, the more the impressiongrows that we herehave the resultof a continuousprocess of permutationof con- stituent elementsand ideas.This may lead us to the assumptionthat some,if not all, of al-Buni'sworks were not written by himself.Instead, we may considerseveral of the titlesthat go under al-Buni'sname as part of a Corpus Bunianum, as the product of the work of severalgenera- tions of practicingmagicians, who arrangedal-Bunib work and thought and brought it out, probabiywhile mixing thesewith elementsof their own works. This doesnot merelyimply that there is a pseudepigraphic Bunian literature,but also that some works by al-Buni, or ascribedto him, may in fact constitutea compositionof fragmentsof very diverse origin.' Thisshould not shockthe trainedphilologist, who usuallythinks in terms of a fixatedtext with certain authorshipand a reconstructable * 'Paleography InterpresLegati Warneriani and Professorof and Codicology of the Islamic\Arorld'in Leiden University.Address: Faculty of Arts. P.O.Box 9515.2300RA Leiden,The Netherlands.E-mail: <[email protected]>. 1 MohamedM. El-Gawhary,Die Gottesnamenim magischenGebrauch in den al-Buni zugeschriebenenWerken (Bonn, l968), p. 17.El-Gawhary dates the compositionof the Shamsal-ma'arfto at leasta centuryafter ai-Buni's death. This is not contradictedby the "Iartlb datingsof the Leidenmanuscripts of the Shamsal-ma'arif and the al-da'awat(see the'Bibliographicalnote'below for all ref-erencesto manuscriptsand printed works). 184 'AN IUST WITKAM stemmaof manuscripts,since in the caseof populartexts, both magical and other,the author is unimportant and hasoften disappearedbehincl 'his' text. Usersand readersof such popular classicstreat the work as their own books, in the doubie senseof the word. and feel free to alter these.l Westernscholarship has not alwaysbeen kind to al-Boni. Ullmann characterizeshis intellectualachievement, while contrastingal-B0ni's ingenuity in analyzinga finely structuredcosmos to his practical 'colossal approachof the unseenworld, as a sign of credulityl and al Bnni'smethod of usingthe numericaland other propertiesof wordsancl lettersas'stupid, formalistic arithmeticl When readingsuch qualifica tions,one wonders whether Ullmann by this remarkhad actuallywishecl to proposethat al-Btrni,if only he had worked in a lesscredulous and lessformalistic arithmetical way, would reallyhave provided his readers with meaningfulanswers to the enigmaof the universe. Ullmann is however correct in stating that al-Brlni'sworks do not constitute a source for our knowledge of the older Arabic literaturc on magic,and he proposesthat they rather representa crosssection of practicesand beliefs which were current before, during and after al-Bnni'slifetime, during which period the corpus,which now count\ somefortyr titles,has come into being.Al-Buni is the figureheadof thi: corpus, nothing more. Personail,v,I think that if the assumptionoi .r popularorigin of thevarieties of magicdiscussed can be documented,it would makethe Buniancorpus even more interesting. Ibn Khaldun,who often takesa relaxedview on thosefields of scienc. which he doesnot personaliyendorse, quotes al-Brtni on his own vier' of the attainabilityof lettermagic, the most conspicuouselement in hir 'One works,as: shouldnot think that one can get at the secretof thc ' Seee.g. El-Gawhar1., Die Gottesnnnreir,p. 1.11Lfbr a full discussionon the genc,r, of the Brlniancorpus. 3 Manfred Ullmann, Die Natur- und Geheinwissenschaftenim Islam (Leiden Iere 1972),p.391. '' Brockelmann,GAL, G I, p. 497,in combinationrvith S I, pp. 910-91l, mentions.rv titles,but he has not evenattempted to relatethese to one another.Hrs list still retlc.r. the order in which he worked thiough thc cataloguesthat constitutehis primary sour-.c. for the bibliographvof al-Bunis works. Progressin manuscriptcataloguing will rtr c.,. more titles.However, some of Brockelmann's39 dill'erenttitles will. uDoncloser e-i.arrrr nation,prove to beidentical rr"ith olhers rvhich go by othertitles. Tlre Corpus BIrri.trrt.r' is asyet far from being clearlydeirned. THE EGyprrAN MAGTcTANer-suNi AND Hrs woRK lg5 letterswith the help.ofrogical reasoning. one getsto it with the help of vision and divine aidls By far the most widespreadand best-knownwork by al-Buni is his shams^al-ma'arifwa-rati-if ar-'awarif, .The whichmay be translatedas o,fall Knowredgeand the lun Nicetiesof Thosewho Knowl It is a true encyclopaediaof Isramic, or Islamicised, magic. The reason for the book'spopularity must havebeen the practicaluse for which it wasevr_ dently composed.It contains onry fewiheoreticalpassages and the work aboundswith instructionsfor the manufact..r. oi u-.il"t, ura-f op.rtu. medical recipesfor all sorts of purposesand occasionr.rt. departure ioirrt of for al-Bunisproposition s'are ar-Asma' qr-husna,the .Beauti_ ful Names'of God. although theseninety-nine namesare not a' liter- ally derived from the eurhn,o both by t'heir very origin and by their semanticdesignation they have, in courseof time, acq"uiredu, at-ort divine status.The elr Arabica,phabet,;t"Jffjilj:ijfifiTil:ffi j"j'::il,T:: theme in the corpus B.nianum. ;i: The Arabic alphabetis of divine ori- gin anyrvay,because .t"a. Godt final revelationt" "ir"r.,..1:^;::::_ e.aui.,o,rg,,.,.unait mayth.r.f;;. b': "Trl*:X1illif; :T,n; on the well-preservedtablet,.the archetypeof the Qur'an which is pre- servedin heaven'is in fact the Arabic riript. But even if this assump- tion would somehowprove to be inexactor incorrect,the very iu.t tt nt God's ninety-nine namesare, at least in this worrd, written in Arabic script makesthe lettersthrough which they areexpressed, into holy and magicallypowerful constituentparts for ail sorts of fur;;i;;,';;"y".r, well-provenrecipes and amurets. This is the idea which lies at the basis of most of al-Buni'smagical devices. Western scholarshipgot a first grasp of the content of the Shams al-m.a'arifthrough Ahlwardt's detaiedlist of the chapter tittes or tne Berlin manuscriptof the text.8The content of many ott., -"rrrscripts t Ibn Khaldun ' TheMuqatldimah. An introductionto Arabicby Franz Rosenth"lit::*:, History. Transratedfror.' the Khaidun's ;:'i;4..See ror. another example of rbn common senseriis view on the*91, traditional iiir scrences(-... no placefor the intel_ lectin them. .:), ibid.,II,p. 430. 'al-Asma' al-Husna,'in Encyclopaedia ,rui,,"J.t)r?tdet' o,fIslam (New ed.), I (t.eiden, t Quran l6:103. 8 w. Ahlrvardt, verzeichnisstrer arabischen HandschriJtenfder kiinigrichenBibriothek zu Berlinl,III (Berlin,i89t), pp SOS_St0. Th.'n.rt.attion,,''"' publishid in the Middle Eastand India precedeehlwardt,s catalogue.^"' 186 iANIUST wrrKAM of the Shamsal-ma'arif closeiyfollows this pattern.However, if onewere to assumethat the numerousuncritical and commercialeditions rvhich haveappeared in the Orient sincethe middle of the 19th centuryfbl low that selfsamepattern, then one is in for a surprise.Although thc printed editionsare rather uniform in their content,they divergeu'ideh from the manuscript tradition of this work. This can immediatel,vbe seen,not only by comparisonbetween the texts,but especiallyfrom the enormousamount of figures,squares and other graphicsin the printecl editions,whereas the manuscriptshave only a limited number of such f'eatures. In the manuscripts,where the title is usualiygiven by the authorin his prologue,ethebookisentitledShamsal-ma'arifwa-lata'if al-'awari.f,an'1 this title is equallygiven in the prologueto the work in the printed edi tions.However, the title-pagesof the printed editionsgive slightiy dilfer ent title, namely Shamsal- awariJal-kuhra wa-lata'if al- awariJ,which makesall the difference.There are two ways to explain this addition. 'the One may interpretthis additionaltermal-kubra, iarger/largestver- sionlwithin the contextof approachesin classicalIslamic scholarship. where an author would composeseveral versions of one and the sam.' work. It is not uncommon in many branchesof Muslim scholarshipto havean extendedversion, a conciseversion and evenin somecases al.I intermediateversion in circulation.Within that context,the addition ol-kubrato the title might indicatethat the printed editionsoffer such an extendedversion, whereas the known manuscriptsonly givethe shorter or the intermediateversion.l0 This may be asit is,but anotherexplana- tion of the additionalword al-kubrain the title of the printed editionsis possibleand more probable.When the Shamsal-ma'arif was iirst pre- paredfor print, an enormouscorpus of magicalsquares, schedules, cir clesand other graphicswith their accompanyingtexts, was addedto it. The unknown pr.rbiisheror editor,who must havebeen responsibletbr this, may havewished to bring out a version that would supersedeall other (manuscript)versions. The title, Shamsal-ma'arif al-kubra r;ra.r 'the 'whereby be translatedas (most)extensive Shams al-ms'arif it is trr " Generallyspeaking,titlesontitle-pages,orontheloweredgeofthebookblockti,r
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