British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies

ISSN: 1353-0194 (Print) 1469-3542 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbjm20

Talismans and figural representation in Islam: a

cultural history of images and magic

Negar Zeilabi

To cite this article: Negar Zeilabi (2019) Talismans and figural representation in Islam: a cultural
history of images and magic, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 46:3, 425-439, DOI:
10.1080/13530194.2017.1410466

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2017.1410466

Published online: 27 Dec 2017.

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British Journal of Middle eastern studies
2019, Vol. 46, No. 3, 425–439
https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2017.1410466

Talismans and figural representation in Islam: a cultural

history of images and magic
Negar Zeilabi
Department of History and Civilization of Muslim Nations, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

ABSTRACT
Aniconism in Islam is one of the obvious presumptions of researchers
in the history of Islamic arts. The main question addressed in this study
is: What are the conceptions of people living in the earlier centuries
of Islam regarding the issues of image and figural art? Or, in broader
terms: What is the issue of animal or human representation in art which
led to aniconism being enshrined in fiqh (religious jurisprudence)?
Drawing upon primary sources, the study establishes that the Muslim
mindset of image and figurative art in the early centuries of Islam—
traced back to an old belief in the Persian, Egyptian and Ancient
Palestinian civilizations—mainly pertained to the images which used
to constitute the major elements of sorcery and talismans. Accordingly,
aniconism did not proscribe images as aesthetic elements which also
serve as the foundations of visual arts; rather, it was pitted against
the practice of magicians and talisman makers. The genesis and
perpetuation of aniconism in Islam are, therefore, associated with the
cultural mentality of magic and talismans in step with the Quran’s
explicit stance against polytheism and idolatry.

Introduction
Aniconism in Islam is so well-known among the first generation of Orientalists and authors
of Islamic art histories that discussion about why and how this idea has been established or
the possibility of encouraging critical debates on the issue has not been able to come to the
fore. In most debates on visual arts, the fatwa (legal opinion) against depicting living things
is presumed by many authors of works on the Islamic arts. The corollary is that very convo-
luted analyses are given regarding Islamic art, representing Islamic laws as opposing visual
arts. The presumption is not, nonetheless, exclusive to the contemporary era, and is com-
monplace among the Muslim public, fuqahā (Islamic jurists) and even researchers of the
history of Islamic arts. This paper aims to look at the issue of aniconism from a new perspec-
tive by disclosing another layer of the cultural features of Islamic societies of earlier centuries
and adopting a cultural history approach. An attempt has, therefore, been made to offer a
historical interpretation of the issue at hand. This is going to be done with the historical
research method which sees the social and cultural mindsets of every period in relation to

CONTACT Negar Zeilabi N_zeilabi@sbu.ac.ir

© 2017 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies
  N. ZEILABI

the preceding and succeeding periods; following the examination of early accounts and
aḥādīth, the cultural and social context of the verdict against depicting living animals—from
the beginning to the middle centuries of Islam—will be examined to achieve a historical
interpretation. Does Islam really prohibit, on the basis of these accounts, figural representa-
tion (painting and making sculptures)? Will the craftsmen depicting or making an image
lodge in hell? Is the centuries-long conflict between Islamic jurists and craftsmen based on
a bona fide opposition? Is breaking or disfiguring figurines and other artistic works practised
by wrathful religious people as based on the Prophet’s tradition a rational imitation built
upon clear reasoning? Answers advanced to these questions have, more often than not,
ascribed the genesis of this verdict to external factors like the perpetuation of the Jewish
tradition1 and to the influence of iconoclasm in Eastern Christianity.2 In addition to the
theories which seek the reasons behind the verdict somewhere outside of the Muslim society
proper, some intrareligious ideas have been proposed with regard to the socio-cultural
circumstances of the Muslim society which are of importance but not comprehensive enough
to explain all the reasons. Known as ‘manṣūs ul-ʿillat’ (lit. matters whose reasons and philos-
ophy are based on the Islamic texts) in the circles of Islamic jurists and the books on fiqh and
hadith, one such theory is the famous opposition of Islam to polytheism, idolatry and sculp-
turing. According to this view, Muslims thought of constructing images and figures repre-
senting animals as a sort of rivalry with the Creator, whence comes the understanding of
figurative art as polytheism. Some features of Islamic art like avoiding perspective representa-
tion are the result of this idea. Also mentioned as the reasons of the interdiction are more
detailed matters like decorating kings’ palaces and the homes of the affluent with images
and figures, which was in sharp contrast with living an unassuming life.3
Drawing on primary sources and emphasizing the factors indigenous to the Muslim com-
munity, this paper addresses the major question as to what the secular social factors con-
tributing to the genesis and later generalization of the verdict were, while subscribing to
some of the ideas advanced by previous researchers. In other words, what was the attitude
of the Arabs living during the early centuries of Islam towards depicting animal and human
images which led to such interdiction? Was the modern conception which is based on aes-
thetics in artistic representations understood back then? Does it follow that Islam’s opposition
to figural representation is, in fact, Islam’s opposition to aesthetics and the foundations of
visual arts?

1
A variety of hypotheses have been formulated regarding the reason behind the prohibition on depicting animate things in
Islam. The first one, mostly favoured by the first generation of Western scholars in Islamic Studies, has it that since Islamic
sharia was a wholesale borrowing from the Pharisaic law of Judaism—which happens to interdict depicting animate
things—Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) has followed in its footsteps or, to put it in better terms, had Judaism lacked such a
verdict, Islam would not have had it either. In the Book of Deuteronomy, the creating of sculptures in the shape of human,
animals, birds, reptiles and fish is explicitly prohibited: ‘so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol,
an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air,
or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below’ (Bible, Early Translation, NRSV 4:16–18).
Orientalists like Henri Lammens, Thomas Walker Arnold and Alfred Guillaume support this hypothesis. See: Richard
Ettinghausen, Studies in Muslim Iconography: I. The Unicorn (Washington, D.C./Baltimore, MD: The Lord Baltimore Press,
1950), pp. 3–6; Arnold, Painting in Islam: A Study of the Place of Pictural Art in Muslim Culture (New York: Dover
Publications, 1965), pp. 3–13.
2
A historical problem arises with this hypothesis; chances are that the concurrence of the expansion of Islam with that of
iconoclasm in the Byzantine world had an effect on the formation of such a verdict in the Muslim world. The hypothesis
concerning the imitation of Judaic jurisprudence is pertinent in view of the continuation of cultural traits in a geographical
region; some evidence is also presented in this paper which is testimony to the similarity between Jewish and Islamic
traditions. As regards the second hypothesis, i.e. the influence of iconoclasm as practised in Eastern Christianity on the
Muslim communities, it suffers from a lack of enough historical evidence.
3
G.S. Hodgson, ‘Islam and Image’, History of Religions, 3(2) (1964), pp. 220–260.
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES  427

Alongside accepting the intrareligious reasons put forth so far—i.e. Islam’s opposition to
polytheism, to idolatry and figural representation’s being in conflict with an unassuming
lifestyle—the issue has been approached from yet another angle. The association of image
with magic and talismans in the cultural context of the early and middle centuries of Islam
and the impact this relation had on aniconism is a debate which has not been dealt with
adequately. By virtue of an old tradition in the ancient civilizations of Persia, Palestine, Arabia,
Egypt and Northern Africa, there was no aesthetic drift to figurative art, not least human
and animal images and sculpturing, in the early centuries of Islam; the image was first con-
ceived in magical and cryptic terms. (The historical evidence for the coupling of images and
talismans is offered in detail later in the paper.) Animal and human images constituted the
primary and basic tools of any sorcerer or talisman maker, and since their activities mostly
partook of evil purposes trying to negatively affect the life and providence of human beings,
creating an unsafe situation based on illusion and false irrational beliefs in the society, they
were vehemently opposed in Abrahamic traditions including Islam; practising sorcery was
thus put on an equal footing with polytheism and homicide. The followers of this group of
religions—especially Jews and Muslims—widely implemented the tradition of black magic
and talismans in their societies despite the religions’ advising against them and the punish-
ment foreseen for them. If the concept of image was considered equal or proximate to the
concept of talisman, it is no surprise that the legislator’s stance against figural representation
was associated with talismans, not with visual arts. The paper tries to approach the early-cen-
turies Muslim mindset of figurative art with a social and cultural history outlook and to
explain another cultural layer in more concrete terms by drawing on a variety of evidence
in addition to what has been stated so far regarding the issue.

Examining the matter in the Quran, exegeses and hadith

It appears that the Quran does not clearly emphasize the prohibition of depicting images.
The epithet muṣawwir is an attribute of Allah, meaning the creation of shape and animating
things.4 Some verses have indirect references to sculptors about which there is no consistent
and unanimously agreed interpretation. There are many interpretive disagreements about
‘māida’ (verse 110) in which Christ animates a clay-made bird icon by Allah’s permission. Both
those for and against depicting animate things cite this verse as evidence for their opinion.
Another piece of evidence in the Quran, ‘Saba’ (verse 13), allows for a positive interpretation
besides a variety of exegeses and disagreements thereof: it may be gleaned from the verse
that the making of figurines by the daemons for Solomon implicitly approves of sculpturing.
The exegeses below the verse also attribute the creating of animal and human statues to
Solomon. Sources like Shaykh Ṭūsī’s Tibyān,5 Ṭabarsī’s Madjmaʿa al-Bayān6 and Zamakhsharī’s
Kashshāf 7 mention that Solomon used to keep images of birds and animals like the lion,

4
‫( هوهللا الخالق الباریء المصور له االسماء الحسنی‬al-Ḥashr: 24):‘He is Allah, the Creator, the Inventor, the Fashioner.’
‫( هو الذی یصور فی االرحام کیف یشاء‬āli ʿimrān: 6):
‘It is He who forms you in the wombs however He wills.’
5
Muhammad ibn Ḥasan Ṭūsī, Al-Tibyān fī Tafsīr al-Qurān (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turath al-ʿArabī, 1389), vol. 8, p. 383.
6
Ṭabarsī (Ṭabrisī), Faḍl ibn Ḥasan, Madjmaʿal- Bayān, trans. Hossein Noori Hamedani (Tehran, Iran: Farahani, n.d.), vol. 20,
p. 230.
7
Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf ʿan Ḥaḳāyiḳ Ghawāmiḍ al-Tanzīl… (Beirut, n.d.), vol. 3, p. 572.
428 N. ZEILABI

eagle and peacock as a way of making his palace magnificent; it is also said that he used to
install copper, crystal or marble statues8 of prophets and angels to encourage people to
worship God. That said, many varied interpretations are offered about the practices by the
prophet: based on the accounts informed by the aniconic discourse of the early centuries,
Barqī’s Al-Maḥāsin and Kulaynī’s Kāfī state—in an attempt to solve the contradiction—that
the sculptures at his palace were those of trees and plants9; Zamakhsharī believes10 the
statues were probably headless; some have simply said that there was no prohibition on
statue making in Solomon’s time.11 Some Western scholars have interpreted the word anṣāb
in ‘Māida’ (verse 90)12 as ‘the statue’, thus believing the verse to be emphasizing the prohibi-
tion.13 In the lexicographies of the Quran and the various exegeses, the word is taken to
mean a piece of stone on which sacrifice is performed or as idols erected to be worshipped,
and so never taken to mean statue.14 It is however certain that the Quran takes an explicit
stance towards idols—which is one of the primary reasons of their being forbidden.15 This
is not nonetheless the whole picture; in order to discover the other reasons and examine
the hypothesis put forth in this paper, the other sources of hadith, fiqh and of history need
to be thoroughly examined, compared and analysed and the socio-cultural mentality of the
people at the dawn of Islam regarding figural depiction must be recognized.
In hadith sources, the most important accounts about the prohibition of depiction are
as follows:

• It is well-known that the day Muslims conquered Mecca, the prophet of Islam demanded
that all figurines and images on the internal wall of the Kaaba be removed except for
the images of Mary and Christ. Even the image of Abraham holding arrows in his hands
was removed. ‘May God kill those who depicted Abraham as the distributer of arrows’,
the prophet is quoted as saying.16
• We are told by Abū Hurayra that prophet Muhammad saw the image of the Christian
Cross on some of his wives’ dresses and sharply rebuked them.17

8
Also see: Muḳātil ibn Sulaymān (d. 150 AH), Tafsīr (Beirut: Dar Ehya al-turath, 1423/2002), vol. 15, p. 527.
9
‫وهللا ما هی التماثیل الرجال و النساء و لکنه الشجر و شبهه‬.
10
Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, vol. 3, p. 572.
11
See Yaḥyā ibn Salām Taymī (d. 200 AH), Tafsīr-i Yaḥya ibn Salām (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmia, 1425), vol. 2, p. 749.
12
‫یا ایها الذین امنوا انما الخمر و المیسر و االنصاب و االزالم رجس من عمل الشیطان فاجتنبوه لعلکم تفلحون‬.
13
Oleg Grabar, ‘Islām wa hunarhāy-i tajassumī’, trans. Sayyed Rahim Musavi-Nia. Faslnāmiy-i hunar, 28(1374), pp. 216–217.
14
Husayn ibn Muhammad Rāghīb Isfahānī, Mufradāt Alfāż al-Qurān (Beirut and Damascus: Sufwan ʿAdnan Dawudi, 1412),
p. 494; Muhammad ibn Mukarram ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1414), vol. 2, p. 298; Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf,
vol. 1, pp. 674–675.
15
In suras Anbiā (51–52) and Ṣāfāt (96), Abraham prevents his father from worshipping idols. Moses’ harsh criticism of
Israelites who had made a golden statue in the shape of a calf was also due to the Quran’s opposition to idolatry. These
tough stances towards idols and the believers’ fear of the society restoring the idolatrous traditions seem to have paved
the way for the emergence of early debates over prohibition of depicting living things and sculpturing.
16
‫قاتلهم هللا! جعلوه شیخا یستقسم باالزالم‬. See Muhammad ibn ʿUmar Wāqidī, Maghāzi (Beirut: Muaʾssisat āl al-ʿilm ī lil-maṭbūʾāt,
1989), vol. 2, p. 834; Muhammad ibn Aḥmad Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām wa fiʾāt al-Mashāhīr wa al-ʿAlām (Beirut: Dār
al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1993), vol. 1, p. 74; also see Yaʿqūbī, Ahmad ibn Abi Yaʿqūb, Tārīkh (Beirut: n.d.), vol. 1, p. 259 for the way
arrows and gambling (maysir) be interpreted.
17
Hussein ibn Muhammad Taghi Nūrī, Mustadrik al-Wasāil wa mustanbaṭ al-Masāil (Qum, Iran: Muaʾssisat āl al-bayt li-Iḥyā
Turāth, 1408), vol. 3, pp. 453–454; vol. 13, p. 210. Obviously, the Christian Cross is forbidden in this case because of avoiding
similarity to Christians and it has nothing to do with the concept of figurative art.
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 429

• In an account by the prophet, we are told that angels would not set their foot in a house
where there is a figure or a dog.18
• Ibn Abī Jumhūr’s ʿAwalī al-La’ālī states that whoever makes an image will be tormented
on the Day of Judgement until he can animate the image and, since such a thing is
impossible, the condition implies that he will be eternally tormented; according to
the same source, the prophet also put his curse on those who make animal statues.19
• Ṣadūq’s Khiṣāl also prohibits figural representation, stating that those who make images
will be tormented in the afterlife.20
• Ḥimyarī’s Qurb al-Asnād—a Shiite hadith text belonging to the latter half of the third
century AH—mentions that someone put a question to the Imam about the acceptance
of prayers in a house where there is an image or statue of an animal like a bird or fish
and about the prayers of an individual in clothes with the image of animals on them.
The Imam replied that such prayers would not be accepted unless the image or statue
is disfigured in some way, for example by severing the head of the statue.21
• Sources recite a hadith in which the prophet likens the creator of images to a criminal
who would assassinate the prophet or to the individual who would be killed by the
prophet or to a person who misleads people.22
• In an account cited in Ṣahīh al-Bukhārī, ʿUmar ibn Khaṭṭāb prohibits Muslims from enter-
ing synagogues due to their housing images and statues.23
• In the Ṣihah of Sunnites, there is a saying from Umm-i Salama: ‘I told the prophet about
a synagogue, in Ethiopia, decorated with images. He said: “This is a group that depicts
images on the tombstone of their nice deceased person and they are the worst of
people in God’s opinion.”’24
• ʿAisha recounts that she had once hung a curtain decorated with the images of winged
horses in the house, which upset the prophet. ʿAisha then cut the curtain in half and

18
The hadith, ‘‫’ال تدخل المالئکه بیتا فیه صوره و ال کلب و ال جنب‬, has been recited in various Shiite and Sunnite sources. See: Mālik ibn
Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ (Beirut: Dār iḥyā al-Turāth al-Arabī, 1985), vol. 2, p. 966; Bukhārī, Ṣahih, ed. Muhammad Dhihni Afandi
(Istanbul, 1981), vol. 4, p. 82, vol. 7, p. 66; Tirmidhī, Sunan (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1983), vol. 4, pp. 200–201; Nisāʾī, Sunan (Beirut:
Dār ul-Fikr, 1930), vol. 8, p. 212; Muslim Neysāburī, Ṣaḥīḥ (Beirut: Dār ul-Kitāb, n.d.), vol. 6, p. 157; Ibn Ashʿath Sajistānī,
Sunan abī Dāwūd (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1990), vol. 2, p. 280; Bayhaqī, Al-Sunan al-Kubrā (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), vol. 7,
p. 268; Ibn ʿAbd al- Barr, al- Istidhkār (Beirut, 2000/1379), vol. 8, p. 483; DāraḲuṭnī, ʿIlal (Riadh: Dār ibn al-Jowzī, 1405), vol.
8, p. 229; Ibn Bābūya, Man La Yaḥẓuruh al-Faqīh, rev. Ali Akbar Ghaffari (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisat al-Nashr al-Islāmī, 1413),
vol. 1, p. 246; Wāhidi Neyshābūrī, Asbāb al-Nuzul (Beirut: Dār ul-Kitāb al-ʿIlmia, 1411), p. 194; ʿAllāma Ḥasan ibn Yūsif Ḥilli,
Tadhzkirat al-Fuqahā (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisa Āl-i Bayt, 1414), vol. 1, p. 99, vol. 2, p. 505; Muḥaqqiq Ḥillī, Al-Muʿtabar fi
sharḥ al-Mukhtasar (Qum, Iran: Muaʾssisi-y-i seyyed al-Shuhada, 1407), vol. 2, p. 98; Nūrī, Mustadrik al-Wasāil, vol. 3,
p. 454.
19
‘‫من صور صوره عذب حتی ینفخ فیها الروح و لیس بنافخ؛ ان اهل هذه الصور یعذبون یوم القیامه یقال احیوا ما خلقتم؛ فی الحدیث انه (ص) لعن من مثل‬
‫( ’بالحیوان‬Bukhārī, Ṣahih, vol. 66, p. 66); Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Mosnad (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), vol. 2, p. 145; Muhammad ibn
Zayn al-Dīn ibn Abī Jumhūr, ʿAwalī al-Lālī fī al-Aḥādīth al-Dīnī (Qum, Iran: Nashr-i Sayyid al-Shuhadā, 1405), vol. 1,
pp. 148, 132; also see: Ahmad ibn Muhammad Barqi, Al-Maḥāsin, rev. Jalalidin Muhaddith (Qum, Iran: Dār al-Kitāb al-Islamia,
1371), vol. 2, p. 616; Muhammad ibn Yaqūb Kulaynī, Al-Kāfī, rev. Ali Akbar Ghaffari and Muhammad Akhundi (Tehran, Iran:
Dār ul-Kitab al-Islamia, 1407), vol. 6, p. 528; Ibn Bābūya, Man La Yaḥẓuruh al-Faqīh, vol. 3, p. 401, vol. 4, p. 5).
20
‘‫ایاکم و عمل الصور فانکم تسالون عنها یوم القیامه؛ من صور صوره عذب و کلف ان ینفخ فیها‬.’ Ibn Bābuya, Al-Khiṣāl (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisat
al-Manshūrāt al-Islāmia, 1362), vol. 1, p. 109.
21
ʿAbdullah ibn Jaʿfar Ḥimyari, Qurb al-Asnād (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisa Āl-i Bayt, 1413), pp. 185–186; Sarakhsi, Al-Mabsūṭ (Beirut:
Dār al-Maʿarifa, 1986), vol. 1, p. 210; Ḥasan ibn Yūsif Ḥillī, Tadhzkirat al-Fuqahā (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisa Āl-i Bayt, 1414),
vol. 2, pp. 578–579.
22
‘‫اشد الناس عذابا یوم القیامه المصورون؛ اشد الناس عذابا یوم القیامه رجال قتل نبیا او قتله نبی و رجل یضل الناس بغیر علم او مصور یصور التماثیل‬.’
Bayhaqī, Al-Sunan al-Kubrā (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), vol. 7, pp. 267–268; Bukhārī, Ṣahih, vol. 6, p. 161; Nūrī, Mustadrik
al-Wasāil, vol. 13, p. 210.
23
Bukhārī, Ṣahih, vol. 1, p. 112.
24
Ibid.
430 N. ZEILABI

made cushions, using the material for sitting on.25 Another account attributes the pro-
hibition of images to the fact that they disturb the mind of the person who says prayers.
In relation to the curtain story recounted by the prophet’s wife, the prophet is quoted
as saying angels would not enter a house where there are images.26
• A man told Ibn ʿAbbās he earned his livelihood by selling images and statues he made.
Ibn ʿAbbās replied that anyone making images would be tormented by God in the
afterlife until he would animate the images. Upon hearing this, the man got upset and
agitated. Ibn ʿAbbās suggested the man make images of trees and inanimate things to
earn his livelihood, thus solving the problem.27
• ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib is quoted as saying that whoever builds a tomb anew or makes an
image or statue has fallen out of Islam.28
• In a hadith mentioned in Saḥiḥ al-Bukhārī, the prophet prohibits tattooing and figu-
rative art.29

According to these aḥādīth, both Shiite and Sunnite sources30 are replete with pronounce-
ments for the prohibition of any sort of figurative art. They unanimously agree on the neces-
sity of removing images and statues,31 the prohibition on entering a house decorated with
images of animals or humans as well as statues, non-acceptance of prayers said in clothes
ornamented with human and animal images, the forbidding of saying prayers in clothes
made of the hide of wild animals, the prohibition on dealing in statues, and other issues
related to figurative art.

Talismans and images

There is evidence that figurative art used to be a main tool used by magicians and talisman
makers in the early Islamic and middle Islamic eras, the verdicts just discussed being a gen-
eralization of the prohibition on magic and talismans to other areas. Hadith sources abound
in accounts on proscribing talismans and magic, examining which reveals that the danger
caused by magicians was held to compromise the psychological security and peace of the

25
Ibid, vol. 3, p. 108.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid. Ibn ʿAbbās suggested to him: ‘‫ان ابیت اال ان تصنع فعلیک بهذا الشجر و کل شیء لیس فیه روح‬.’
28
‘‫ ’من جدد قبرا او مثل مثاال فقد خرج عن االسالم‬see: Ahmad ibn Muhammad Barqī, Al-Maḥāsin, rev. Jalalidin Muhaddith (Qum, Iran:
Dār al-Kitāb al-Islamia, 1371), vol. 1, p. 453.
29
‘‫( ’ان النبی نهی عن ثمن الدم و… و الواشمه و المستوشمه و من صور صوره‬Bukhārī, Ṣahih, vol. 7, p. 67); on the prohibition on tattooing,
see: Kulaynī, Al-Kāfī, vol. 5, p. 559.
30
Muhammad ibn Saʿīd Kadmī, Ziādāt abi Saʿīd al-Kadmi, ʿAlā kitāb al-Ashrāf li ibn mundhir al-Neysābūrī (Muscat: Wizarat
al-awqaf wa al-Shuʾun al-Dinia, 2011), p. 280; Abdullah ibn Qudāma, Al-Mughnī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.), vol. 8,
pp. 112–113; Ḥasan ibn Yūsif Ḥillī, Muntahī al-Maṭlab (Mashhad, Iran: Majmaʿ al-Buhūth al-Islamia, 1412–15), Section 4,
pp. 269, 338; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Muqaddas Ardabīlī, Madjmaʿ al- Fāʾida, rev. Mudjtabā al-ʿArāḳī and Others (Qum,
Iran: 1414/1993), p. 66; Mīrzāy-i Qumī, Ghanā ʾim al-Ayyām (Qum, Iran: Markaz al-Nashr al-Ṭābiʿl maktab al-Aʿlām al-Islāmī,
1417–20), pp. 214–215, 332–334; Shaykh Ṭūsī, Al-Mabsūṭ, ed. Muhammad Taghi Kashfi (Tehran, Iran: 1387), vol. 1,
pp. 84–86; Shaykh Ṭūsī, Al-Nihāya (Qum, Iran: Quds-i Muhammadi Publishers, n.d.), p. 99; Ibn Barrāj, al- Muhadhdhab
(Qum, Iran, Muʾassisa al-Nashr al-Islāmī, 1406/1985), vol. 1, p. 99; Ibn idrīs Ḥillī, Al-Sarāʾir (Qum, Iran: Office of Islamic
Publications, 1410), vol. 1, pp. 261–263; Ḥillī, Taḥrīr al-Aḥkām (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisa Imam Sadiq, 1420), vol. 1, p. 200. For
a more detailed bibliography on aniconism in fiqh texts see: Jawād ibn Muhammad ʿĀmilī Ghirawī, Miftāḥ al-Kirāma (Qum,
Iran: Office of Islamic Publishing, 1419–1424), pp. 118–124, 234–237; Muhammad ibn Hasan Fāẓil Hindī, Kashf al-Lithām
(Qum, Iran: Nashr-i Islāmī, 1416–1424), pp. 270–272; Jamiʿ Burūjirdī, Aḥādīth al-Shīʿa (Qum, Iran: Al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿIlmia,
1410), vol. 16, p. 822, vol. 17, p. 220.
31
It was an imperative for the Muslim rulers to remove the images and statues even in the booty gained. Figural representation
was however permitted in some cases like on coins using which trade was conducted; Sarakhsī, Sharḥ al-Siyar al-Kabīr
(Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Miṣr, 1960), vol. 3, p. 1051.
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 431

society, hence the prohibition on it as a ‘major sin’. Shiites and Sunnites as well as various
sects of Islam have a general consensus on the prohibition of magic and the exaction of the
death penalty for those practising it.32 In some sects like Mālikī it is believed that the sin of
practising magic is not to be forgiven even if the practitioner repents; moreover, the Shāfiʿī
sect foresees the death penalty for practising magic in case the person proves to be a pagan.
The practice is also prohibited in the Shiite sect: Kulaynī (b. 329 AH) in Uṣul-i Kāfī and Ibn
Bābuya (b. 381 AH) in many sources, for instance, mention magic as having the same weight
as other major sins like heresy and desertion.33 It brings up the conjecture that these aḥādīth
consider figurative art and magic as interchangeable. In some accounts, juxtaposing the
practices of magicians and those of image makers indicates that these two accompanied
one another so that Qutb-i Rāwandī writes in Lub al-Lubāb, ‘Two persons are to be put in
fire: the magician and the image-maker.’34 Nonetheless, there seems to have been from the
outset a distinction between permitted and banned types of sorcery in the fiqh texts and
hadith. If designed for offensive purposes, to hurt others or to perpetrate other sinister deeds,
it was black magic and thus banned; if it was for warding off black magic, cancelling it or
other protective purposes, it was considered white magic and permitted. This tradition
largely corresponds to the Jewish one. Black magic was often coupled with human and
animal images, whereas white magic revolved around words, letters and numbers. The amu-
lets (taʿwīdh) containing Quranic verses or asmā ullāh (names of God) were permitted in the
Islamic tradition. Rarely were the illustrated amulets allowed, however: the khamsa (lit. five,
referring to the hand) designs with an eye and a text surrounding it were recommended as
a protective amulet to ward off the evil eye.35 Distinguishing between permitted and banned
types of magic and the later modifications of the original religious law informed by secular
conventions is difficult.
There is so much comprehensive and varied evidence in the historical sources on the
relation between images and talismans and practices associated with them that one may
assume that—at least in the early and middle centuries of Islam—figurative art and sculp-
turing belonged to the scope of false science of magic.36 On the contrary, evidence for the
artistic and aesthetic aspect of these practices is meagre.
The concomitance of images with talismans goes back a long time. Regardless of conjec-
tures one can make on the talismanic application of some statues and images in the Assyrian,
Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations, there are more reliable examples to be found in
Nabatean tribes, the Lakhmids of Arabia Petraea and their Levantine and Egyptian

32
Māwardī, Al ḥāwī al-kabir fi fiqh madhhab al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī (Beirut: Dār ul-Kutub al-ʿIlmia, 1994), vol. 13, pp. 89–98.
33
Nahj al-Balāgha, rev. Atarodi Ghouchani (Tehran, Iran: Bonyād Nahj al-Balāgha, 1413), Sermon 79: ‘‫المنجم کالکاهن و الکاهن کالساحر‬
‫و الساحر کالکافر و الکافر فی النار؛‬.’ On the punishment for magicians see Kulaynī, Al-Kāfī, vol. 2, p. 286, vol. 3, p. 704; Ibn Bābūya,
Man la Yaḥẓuruh al-Faqīh, vol. 3, p. 564; ʿUyūn Akhbār al-Ridhā, rev. Mahdi Lajavardi (Tehran, Iran: Jahān Publishing
House, 1378), vol. 1, p. 286; ʿIlal al-Sharāyiʿ (Qum, Iran: Dāvarī Bookshop, 1385), vol. 2, p. 392; for the prohibition on
­divination, charms and tamīma (amulets hung on a child as protection from the evil eye) see Nūrī, Mustadrik al-Wasāil,
vol. 13, pp. 105–106, 110–114.
34
Cited in Nūrī, Mustadrik al-Wasāil, vol. 3, p. 454; vol. 13, p. 110: ‘‫من سحر فقد کذب علی هللا و من صور التصاویر فقد ضاد هللا‬.’
35
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1980–81), s.vv. ‘Evil eye’ (by F.T. Elworthy),
‘Hand’ (by J.A. MacCulloch); Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, Keter Publishing House, 1978–82), s.v. ‘Evil eye’ (by Dov
Noy).
36
Besides images, mysterious numbers and letters play a crucial role in defining a talisman. Encyclopedia of Islam defines
talisman thus: ‘an inscription with astrological and other magic signs or an object covered with such inscriptions, especially
also with figures from the zodiacal circle or the constellations and animals which were used as magic charms to protect
and avert the evil eye’; J. Ruska, B. Carra de Vaux and C.E. Bosworth, ‘Tilsam’, in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman,
Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 1961–2003), https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-
3912_islam_SIM_7553 (accessed 2 August 2016).
432 N. ZEILABI

neighbours (modern-day Palestine, Syria and Egypt): the samples can be found in the col-
lections remnant of talismans associated with statues of various shapes belonging to the
late first millennium BC, such as those of a cow’s head, snake and tortoise.37 In this magic
tradition, ‘image’, especially those images of humans and animals and their body members,
constituted the underlying elements forming the structure of magic, particularly talismans.
In the oldest examples of ceramic containers obtained in the excavations of regions in Syria,
Palestine and Ancient Mesopotamia, unique bowls were found, the interior of which was
covered with talismanic and magical texts and plain human depictions.38 Fish images and
khamsa signs are the oldest images in use for a variety of magical purposes like protection
or for prayers (taʿwīdh) in the Jewish and then in the Islamic tradition. The Jews used these
images in incantations like birkat habayit (blessing for the home) and tefilat haderech (trav-
eller’s prayer), in the decorations of the Torah’s stand in synagogues, and on the doors and
vistas of sacred places; later, khamsa signs and eyes were also employed.39
Zodiac signs are among the most frequently occurring images found in talismanic texts.40
The collections of the National Museum in Warsaw alone hold around one thousand cases
of illustrated talismans containing images of the scorpion, lion, fish, goat, ram etc.41 The
Berlin Collection also holds illustrated talismans informed by old stories; images of Adam
and Eve and other angels frequently featured in the texts.42
There is, furthermore, ample evidence in the Islamic era for the use of image in magical
practices. Ibn Nadīm states that groups involved in magic depicted special images on
stones.43 Some talisman books contain the description of the face of djinns and daemons,
talismans based on these shapes as well as animal shapes like a lion, winged horse, rhinoc-
eros, giraffe and winged angels with a crown, together with exotic beings having an avian
body and a human head.44
Figurative art was a main tool magicians and talisman makers used. Common people
believed that magicians were able to transform human beings into an animal like a dog or
a donkey, using the images. The first famous story is recounted by Masʿūdī (b. 345 AH)45 as
follows: during the caliphate of ʿUthmān, a Jewish magician, Zarara, performed a bizarre
stunt with the help of magic techniques in the Mosque of Kufa before Walid ibn ʿUqba; he

37
Parviz Tanāvulī, Ṭilism: Girāfīk-i Sunnatī Iran (Tehran, Iran: Bon Gāh, 1385/2005), pp. 6–10.
38
Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes
Press, 1985).
39
Encyclopaedia Judaica, ‘Torah Ornaments’ (by Alvin Kass); Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 166.
40
‘The Wisdom of the Chaldeans: An Old Hebrew Astrological Text’, in Studies and Text in Folklore, Magic, Mediaeval
Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Archaeology, ed. M. Gaster (New York: Ktav Publishing, 1971), pp. 338–355;
Roy Kotanskey, ‘Two Inscribed Jewish Aramaic Amulets from Syria’, Israel Exploration Journal, 41(4) (1991), pp. 267–281.
41
Waldemar Deluga, ‘Jewish Printed Amulets’, Print Quarterly, 20(4) (December 2003), pp. 369, 371–372.
42
Ibid., pp. 369–370. Also there is an interesting collection of papyruses containing pictorial magic which belong to the early
fourth century CE, and are now kept in the Michigan Collection. See Hans Dieter Betz, ‘Fragments from a Catabasis Ritual
in a Greek Magical Papyrus’, History of Religions, 19(4) (May 1980), pp. 287–295.
43
Muhammad ibn Ishak al-Nadīm, Al-Fihrist, trans. Muhammad Riza Tajaddod (Tehran, Iran: Asatir, 1381), p. 334. The titles
of books Al-Nadīm includes in his Al-Fihrist under the first and second sections in Essay VII, ‘‫فی اخبار المسامرین و المخرفین و‬
…’ and ‘‫’فی اخبار المعزمین و المشعبذین و السحره و اصحاب النیرنجات و الحیل و الطلسمات‬, are indicative of the fact that image-makers,
those who spread superstition and the enchanters used to cooperate and the themes of most works they produced revolved
around image-makers, legends and superstitious accounts based on magic and talismans (see: al-Nadīm, Al-Fihrist,
pp. 334–370).
44
See: Tanāvulī, Ṭilism, pp. 92–93, pics., 19, 168 and 16. For the images of a rhinoceros and giraffe see: Ettinghausen, The
Unicorn, p. 224, plate 16; for the winged horse in the images belonging to the Sasanian and early Islamic eras see: Richard
Ettinghausen, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran and the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 1972), pp. 11–16.
45
ʿAlī ibn Hussain Masuʿūdī, Muruj al-Dhahab (Qum, Iran: Muaʾssisi-y-i Dār al-Ḥujra, 1409), vol. 2, p. 339.
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 433

set a large camel on a horse which was galloping in the mosque’s courtyard. The magician
himself turned into a camel walking on the rope, following which he produced a donkey
into whose mouth he entered to exit from the anus. The performance was so hallucinatory
that a Muslim killed the magician and told him to come to life again if he could. This story is
considered as one of the deeds of ʿUthmān for which he was scolded (maṭāʿin al-ʿUthmān),
causing protests against him. As well, the contemporaries of Imam Sādiq asked him about
the possibility of a man transforming human beings into animals using the magicians’ meth-
ods. He answered it was deemed heretical and if magicians were able to perform such acts,
they could avert aging and maladies from themselves.46 It was commonly believed that they
achieved their ends by making statues, images, motifs and smoke, to name but a few. There
is evidence of this popular belief being held during the middle centuries of Islam. Ṭabarī in
Dalāʾil al-Imāma47 and Shaykh Mufīd (b. 413 AH) in Al-Ikhtiṣāṣ48 recount an interesting story:
Mansūr, an Abbasid caliph, once rounded up all the magicians of Kabul, asking them to
compete with Imam Ṣādiq using their magic techniques. They produced 70 images of wild
animals with each magician sitting next to the image he had created. After the Imam was
asked to come to the gathering, he began to whisper and recite some charms and prayers
loudly, finally saying ‘Qaswara khudhhum’, upon which each animal created by the magicians
attacked their respective creator, destroying the magicians’ market. Hardly plausible, the
story nonetheless indicates that the contemporaries of the authors believed in it, that magi-
cians used the animal images in their practices and that the transformation of images into
animals was a common delusion among the laypeople. In addition, the reference to Moses
indicates that the element of Jewishness or attributing magic to Jews was a commonplace
of this intellectual sphere along with the other popular assumptions about magic.49
According to the historical sources, there were all over the world of Islam, especially in
Egypt and the Levant, talisman houses known as barābī50 in which human and animal images
were made and kept for various talismanic purposes. Masʿūdī mentions that he has described
at length these places in his other books Funūn al-Maʿārif and Mā Jarā fi al-Duhūr al-Sawālif
(which are not now available).51 The little information he provides in Muruj al-Dhahab is
however astonishing.52 According to Masʿūdī, in the regions of Ṣa’id and the cities of the
provinces of Akhmīm and Samnūd, there were huge, strong, astonishing buildings where
figurines in the shape of animals and humans were kept. Egyptian Jews used to apply the
methods of magic to undermine the strength of their enemies and corps attacking them
from Hejaz, Yemen, the Levant and Maghreb. They would prepare the images of their enemies
mounting their horses and even those of ships bound for Egypt. When the armies of their

46
Ahmad ibn ʿAli Ṭabarsī, Al-Iḥtijāj ʿAlā Ahl al-Lijāj (Mashhad, Iran: Nashr al-Murtidha, 1403), vol. 2, p. 340; Muhammad Bāqir
Majlisī, Biḥār al-Anwār (Beirut: Dār iḥyā al-Torāth al-Arabī, 1403), vol. 10, p. 169.
47
Muhammad ibn Djarir Ṭabarī, Dalāʾil al-Imāma (Qum, Iran: Dar al-Zakhair, 1383/1963), pp. 299–300.
48
Muhammad ibn Muhammad Mufīd, Al-Ikhtiṣāṣ (Qum, Iran: Al-Muʾtamir al-ʿAlimī li-alfia al-Shaykh Mufīd, 1413), p. 368;
also see: Sayyid Hāshim ibn Sulaymān Baḥrānī, Madinat Maʿājiz al-Aʾimat al-Athnā ʿAshar (Qum, Iran: Muʾassissat
al-Maʿārif al-Islamia, 1413), vol. 5, pp. 246, 251–252.
49
The implication of the dhimmī community (non-Muslim citizens of an Islamic society), especially the Jews, in magic and
talismans and the efforts of Muslim jurists and canonists in keeping Muslims away from the harms inflicted by this group
could be another social reason behind aniconism, which can be the subject of another study.
50
The plural form of barbāh, barābī (talisman houses), is apparently a Nabataean word also used in Coptic. It originally means
‘a strong building for magic’. For details see: Aḥmad ibn Muhammad Khafājī, Shafā al-Ghalīl, rev. Muhammad Kashash
(Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmia, 1418), p. 95. According to Ali Khan ibn Ahmad Madanī, Al-Ṭarāz al-Awwal (Mashhad, Iran:
Muaʾssisi-y-i Āl al-Bayt, 1384), vol. 1, p. 137, barābī were impressive buildings where various figures and images were kept;
they were, in fact, small-size Egyptian pyramids.
51
ʿAlī ibn Hussain Masuʿūdī, Al-Tanbīh wa al-Ishrāf (Cairo: Dar-al Sawi, n. d.), p. 20.
52
Masuʿūdī, Muruj al-Dhahab (Qum, Iran: Muaʾssisi-y-i Dār al-Ḥijra, 1409), vol. 1, pp. 398–403.
434 N. ZEILABI

enemies began to set off, the magicians blinded the eyes of the animals in the images using
special needles and recited some charms. It is said that this magic was so powerful that it
blinded the eyes of camels and horses from long-distance.53 These talisman houses were
operative until Yāqūt Ḥimawī’s time (d. 626 AH)—he mentions some of the most famous
ones in the cities of Anṣina, Bahansā and Dandara in Ṣaʿid, Egypt.54 Also Ibn Khaldūn makes
mention of them quoting Ibn ʿAbdul Ḥakam, adding that during the reign of Queen Deluca
who lived after Moses, Egyptians made progress in the (pseudo)science of the talisman
which continued well into the Islamic era. Had not Islamic sharia forcibly prevented them
from such practices, they would have progressed much further. This type of magic popular
at the talisman houses of Egypt was known as adaptive or imitative magic, which was par-
ticularly popular with Jews who used it to harm people for certain purposes.
There was another type of adaptive magic in which the target individual was drawn on
a piece of paper or papyrus to be hung upside down on the wall. After reciting charms, a
needle being heated until red-hot was penetrated into the heart of the image drawn and
wishes were made for the person to lose sleep. It was believed that as long as the needle
was inside the image, the person would not be able to sleep or eat and would remain sick.55
Other interesting cases of using images and statues in talismans are stories narrated in
historical geography sources about the stone statues at the gates of cities, especially in
Persia. For example, Ibn Faqīh (b. 365 AH)56 talks about a stone lion statue57 placed at the
gate of the city of Hamadan. The statue was originally a talisman remnant from Qabād’s time,
variably spelled Kabād and Kabādh (a Sasanian king from the fifth century CE). It was used
to reduce the cold in the city. Accidentally, the cold and snow reduced after the talisman
was built.58 Persians believed that the king had asked Apollonius of Tyana,59 an old Roman
talisman expert, to draw a talisman to ward off all evil and bad things from the region of
Persia. The man was believed to have received 4000 dirhams for each talisman.60 The people
on the street believed that he prepared talismans for every and each bad thing and disaster
from a scorpion sting to wild animals, reptiles, insects and natural disasters like storm, drown-
ing, cold etc.61 These talismans were hidden but a rock or statue was set next to each talisman
as a sign or they were hidden inside the statues.62
Ibn Faqīh63 mentions two talismans in the shape of a cow and fish installed at the top of
the snowy Nahāvand mountains. He could not but express his surprise at the fact that the
statues, although made from snow, did not melt even in the summer and, given their being

53
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 398.
54
Yāqūt Ḥimawī, Muʿjam al-Buldān (Beirut: Dār Ṣadir, 1995), vol. 1, pp. 265, 517, vol. 2, p. 478.
55
‘Charms and Amulets’, in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings.
56
Aḥmad ibn Muhammad ibn Faqīh, Al-Buldān (Beirut: ʿĀlim al-Kitāb, 1996), p. 496.
57
Muktafi Billāh al-ʿAbbāsī intended to transfer this stone lion statue to the gate of Baghdad but it was resisted by the people
of Hamadan who said that the talisman was specially made for their city and was not suitable for any place other than
Hamadan (Ibn Faqīh, Al-Buldān, p. 499).
58
Also see: Ḥimawī, Muʿjam al-Buldān, vol. 5, pp. 415–417.
59
Al-Nadīm, Al-Fihrist, p. 341.
60
Ibn Faqīh, Al-Buldān, p. 420.
61
In the works on talismans, even in the contemporary era, the set of talismans made by Apollonius of Tyana is drawn upon.
As well, people seeking to give credit to their work claim their work is the perpetuation of Apollonius’. An interesting
example is Majmuʿiyi ṭilism-i Iskandar-i dhul-qarnayn in which Qais Rāmpūrī has collected various illustrations of exotic
animals with, for example, a lion’s head and dragon’s body or a half-human half-scorpion body which were used for repelling
diseases and harms like being stung by scorpions and snakes, ameliorating toothache, fever, bleeding and subsiding storms
and saving ships, among others; see: Qais Rāmpūrī, Majmuʿiy-i ṭilism-i iskandar-i dhulqarnayn (Iran: Zubdat-al Alwah,
n.d.), pp. 40–41, 43–50. In most cases, the author cites the work of Apollonius of Tyana.
62
Ibn Faqīh, Al-Buldān, p. 421.
63
Ibid., p. 499.
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 435

there, the city never experienced water shortages. There was also a statue of a horse made
from hay put in a village at Nahāvand; people believed it to be a talisman for plant abundance
and it would remain green throughout winter and summer, on account of which the city, Ibn
Faqīh believes, was the most verdurous of all cities.64 The other depicted talisman was related
to the gate of Bāb al-Abwāb of Armenia. As Ibn Faqīh observes, two columns were built at
the top of the gate’s wall and at the top of each column a figure of a lion made from white
stone was installed. A figure of a man was set up near the door and between his legs the
statue of a fox with a bunch of grapes. It was believed that these were the talismans specially
made for protecting the city and the fortification.65 According to Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm, in Mokran
and Multan, there were idols that had talismanic application. The fascination of these beliefs
was so great that a Muslim man had converted briefly from Islam for the love of these figures,
as the man described for Maqdisī.66 Yāqūt Ḥimawī has also talked about talismans of cities
in the shape of birds and figures of the type representing a human head on a lion’s body.67
These images were sometimes considered to function as magical medicine, an interesting
example of which is an image of a human head on an eagle’s body, drawn on a white piece
of stone, at the door of the Main Mosque of Ḥumṣ. The popular belief was that whenever
someone was stung by a scorpion,68 he should rub some soil on the image, known as the
‘scorpion talisman’, mix the soil with water and drink it; he would recover by God’s permission.
In fact, it was an antidote for the scorpion sting. Maqdisī69 writes about two figures in the
shape of tall minarets similar to each other put in ʿAyn al-Shams, Egypt. They were considered
to be a talisman for warding off crocodiles. He claims that people had some implausible
ideas about the figures. They, however, seemed to be true because he had read something
about them in a book of talismans. He claims he had himself seen the strange fact that
despite there being many crocodiles in Fusṭāṭ County, no one was harmed by them. He also
talks about a depicted talisman for preventing the Nile’s overflow and sandstorms, stating
that the abundance of depicted talismans in Egypt and the Levant is a legacy of the prophets
of these regions.70
On the basis of the sources available to him, Ibn Kathīr (d. 774 AH) reports the beliefs of
the people of Damascus about the well-known talisman of the city at the dawn of the Islamic
conquest. The talisman was a gigantic statue of the Roman era. The statue held a grain of
wheat in one hand and hid a grain of barley in the other.71 Muslims believed that the talisman
was made by the Greek sages and the wheat and barley would not go bad by virtue of the
talisman. He also makes mention of various comprehensive talismans at the city designed
to stop ravens, mice, snakes, scorpions and prevent spiders from building webs and various
insects from causing disturbance. He quotes his grandfather’s observation that before the
conflagration of 461 AH, there were no insects in the mosque due to the septet talismans
hung from the ceiling of the mosque.72 As the information provided by Ibn Waḥshīa’s

64
Ibid., p. 501.
65
Ibid., p. 588.
66
Muhammad ibn Ahmad Maqdisī, Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm fi maʿrifat al-Aqālīm (Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 1991), p. 483.
67
Ḥimawī, Muʿjam al-Buldān, vol. 3, p. 103, vol. 5, p. 401. About the other talismans at Persia’s cities see Ibn Faqīh, Al-Buldān,
pp. 421, 197; Ḥimawī, Muʿjam al-Buldān, vol. 3, p. 103.
68
Ibn Faqīh, Al-Buldān, pp. 161–162; Maqdisī, Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm, p. 186. For other cases see: Ibn Faqīh, Al-Buldān, pp. 501,
550; for another healing talisman in Fasā, Shiraz, see Maqdisī, Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm, p. 444.
69
Maqdisī, Aḥsan al-Taqāsīm, pp. 210–211.
70
Ibid., p. 211.
71
Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Kathīr, Al-Bidāya wa al-Nihāya (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1986), vol. 9, p. 158.
72
Ibid.
436 N. ZEILABI

Al-Filāhat al-Nabaṭīa shows,73 most of these talismans used to repel insects and pests were
made with the knowledge of the qualities of some plants, spices and compositions that
drove insects away, but the commoners—unaware of the functions and properties of these
matters and of the process of composition and impact of the matters involved—thought it
was the talismans that did the job. The same source mentions many astonishing cases of
the methods the talisman experts applied in order to ward off pests, help grow plants and
make fertilizers, many of which are based on figurative art.
For Ibn Waḥshīa, the methods of magic and talismans executed by magicians were mainly
meant for harming, spreading diseases and for evil purposes in general. They reached their
objective by, for example, drawing the picture of a certain man and woman and animals
which had certain qualities. Stressing the prohibition on these evil deeds and the necessity
to repent from them, he states that talisman methods he recommended were all tested and
were used for warding off pests, and that he would never mean to harm any living things
by prescribing his methods.74 As an example, about the pest of the grapevine he writes:
To obliterate the unwanted weeds and other pests from the vineyard, a combination of ceme-
tery soil, human blood or sparrow blood plus oil should be made into a candle-like paste which
becomes the material for making a human figurine. The figurine, in the form of a crucified person,
should be fixed on two pieces of straw with the hands of the figurine outstretched and the end
of straw inserted into the soil, just like a scarecrow.
The crucified figurine is among the most frequent talismans used to repel pests and, as he
states, people used it to prevent the plant from being frostbitten and to improve the growth
of grapes.75 According to the information Ibn Waḥshīa provides, it seems that during the
watering season of palm trees, an individual skilled in figurative art drew a picture of a
donkey, hanging it on the stem of the palm tree by a piece of cotton string. The talisman
would ward off the pests of the tree.76 Since the commoners believed that the palm tree was
the closest resemblance to human beings, it had a variety of special talismans particularly
in the shape of figurines and the human countenance; interestingly, some famous magicians
had a separate prescription for each pest of the palm tree.77 Ibn Waḥshīa refers to famous
magicians like Ṣabiāthā al-Sāhir and Jaryaniā al-Sāhir and their effective methods in repelling
pests, mostly based on one main tool: drawing a picture.78 Another interesting case is the
prescription of a combination of certain materials as a talisman to be buried in the earth;
just over the point the talisman was buried, an image of a human being with one hand over
the other was drawn. It was believed that this human image and the buried talisman were
able to ward off pests and make the fruit sweeter.79 It is obviously observable in Ibn Waḥshīa’s
book that each image had a certain function, possessing mysterious powers—the qualities
that could be used in agriculture.80 Similar talismans were mentioned in some other sources

73
Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī Ibn Waḥshīa, Al-Filāhat al-Nabaṭīa, ed. Taufigh Fahd (Damascus: 1993–1998), vol. 2, pp. 1283–1284,
1307–1308.
74
Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 147, 1394–1395, vol. 2, p. 1045.
75
Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 381–382. For more information on the other crucified human beings depicted and their talismanic properties
see: ibid., vol. 1, pp. 384–386, 414, 514 and 523; on talismans in the shape of birds see vol. 1, p. 514.
76
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 1381.
77
Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 1387–1388, vol. 2, pp. 1418–1447.
78
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 1403, 1446.
79
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 1446.
80
For more cases concerning, for example, the effect of a viper’s image on preventing plants’ being frostbitten see ibid., vol.
2, pp. 1061–1062. To repel the earthly and heavenly pests of the vineyard, images of thick vines were drawn on a piece of
wood or marble plate; see: ibid., vol. 2, pp. 1064–1065.
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 437

as well: in Ḥayāt al-Ḥaywān,81 Damīrī82 prescribes a figurine made of a paste consisting of

medlar, yellow orpiment and oil, which, if hung on the door of a house, would prevent flies
and mosquitos from entering. According to the same source, if air was blown into a wolf-like
hollow copper figurine, the sound created would round up the wolves hearing it. On the
contrary, if it was buried in the earth, wolves would not approach that point. The fascinating
point is that all these talismans were accompanied by a human or animal image or statue.
The protective role of the talismans also includes the motifs on flags. The motif on Dirafsh-i
Kāvīanī (Standard of Jamshid), for example, was popularly believed to be numbers, ciphers
and the picture of talismans and there would not be a defeat as long as it was hoisted. Persia’s
defeat in the Battle of Qādisia was attributed to the falling of the flag and the talisman’s
being stampeded on.83
These traditions were maintained in later periods as well. Ibn Khaldūn discusses at length
the talismans, referring to the frequent use of numbers in talismans along with the extensive
use of images and pictures.84 He describes people’s belief about a special talisman used to
accomplish union between two lovers: if a special image in the zodiac sign of Venus and the
Moon was prepared for each individual, the desirable result would be achieved. Following
Muslima ibn Aḥmad Mujriti’s Al-Ghāya, he calls the pictorial talisman ‘Leo zodiac sign’ (ṭāliʿ-i
asad), adding that this talisman was made by drawing a lion’s face on a piece of Indian steel.
It depicts a lion with its tail cocked in the air, splitting a rock in half: before the lion, a snake
is depicted which jumps from between the lion’s legs onto its face, keeping its mouth open.
Also depicted is a scorpion crawling on the lion’s back. Ibn Khaldūn states that he was an
eyewitness to the group work carried out by the talisman-makers, emphasizing that they
were so skilful that they could cut open the stomach of the real animal using these methods.
He also refers to an essay, Khanziria, which contains the way their methods were utilized in
haunting various animals. For him, most of these matters were specially designed for evil
purposes like separating husbands and wives and harming certain enemies.85
In Islamic culture, however, a huge amount of solutions were introduced to counteract
the ill-effects of talismans. A large part of the ways to counteract them came in the form of
talismans and charms (taʿwīdh). The pictorial talismans were in fact made for both harming
and protecting. Whereas there were talismans to cause separation between couples, the
talismans to make union were also in common use, and came in the shape of statuettes
whose sex was recognizable from their appearance.86 Talismans with charms in the form of
animals were also widely used: a lion’s image, for instance, was used for requiring power or
a bird for freedom (especially for the freeing of slaves from tyrants or women from oppressing
husbands), or a fish was used for prospering businesses and comfort. They were also used
as the neutralizers of the talismans made by enemies for evil purposes.87 The images of the
constellations Taurus, Leo, Pisces and Scorpio were also in wide use, rooted in the very old

81
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 494.
82
Kamāl al-Dīn Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-Ḥaywān al-Kubrā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmia, 1424), vol. 1, p. 505.
83
ʿAbdul Raḥmān ibn Muhammad Ibn Khaldūn, Tārīkh (Dīwān al-Mubtadā wa al-Khabar) (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1988), vol. 1,
p. 662.
84
Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 659–660.
85
Ibid. The talisman and image combined continued into the later centuries and even today. Therefore, Fayẓ Kāshānī’s Al-Wāfī
(Isfahan, Iran: Maktab al-Imam al-Amir al-Muminin Ali Alayh al-Salam, 1406) interdicts idols, images, statues and charms
together; even today, the concomitance of these elements—as a customary practice—can be shown in field
observations.
86
For samples of these talismans see: Tanāvulī, Ṭilism, pics. 94–96, pp. 61–70.
87
See: ibid., pp. 88 and 90, pics. 156–157.
438 N. ZEILABI

symbols in the calendars of the various nations in the region.88 Many astrologers like Abū
Jaʿfar Balkhī and Thābit ibn Qurra were knowledgeable in the elements of astrology and the
cryptic applications of figures and images.89 In some extant samples of these pieces, the
animal and human images were cut and cast in brass and steel sheets, which testifies to the
cooperation of casters and talisman makers—activities that were common back then.90 In
northern Africa a variety of talismans with the images of angels and animals like winged
lions with a human head, constellations and other human images were used for a variety of
purposes including finding hidden treasures.91 The other frequently applied method of cou-
pling images with magical purposes was the images used in tattoos. More than being a
decorative element, the tattoos enjoyed talismanic and charm-related features. Tattooing
on the face, hands and other parts of the body was done in Muslim tribes for many purposes
such as protection against jealousy, the evil eye, earning a livelihood, power, bravery and
treatment of maladies, among others.92 Although the permissible (ḥalāl) application of this
type of magic and, particularly, the ways for counteracting black magic were popular among
people, the religious attitude was always intent on destroying sculptures and removing
images to undo their magical powers. It was assumed that disfiguring sculptures, especially
removing their head and face, would divest them of their magical power. Zamakhshrī,93 for
example, believes that since Solomon’s sculptures are headless and impaired, they are free
from evil aspects. However, drawing a distinguishing line between the formal theory and
socio-cultural convention is a complicated task.
The sheer number of solutions mentioned in hadith widely used by the commoners—the
Quranic suras like ‘muʿawwadhatayn’,94 accounts about the neutralizing effects of some suras
like ‘baqara’95 and the talismans and charms referred to previously—indicate, at least, that
this type of occult science was among the most widespread mental archetypes in Muslims’
and the affiliated tribes’ lives.96 It may be stated that in the first years of Islam, issues of magic

88
See: Rachel Ward, Islamic Metalwork (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), pp. 20–21, pic. 10; Tanāvulī, Ibid.
89
Al-Ṣuwar wa al-Ḥikam ʿAlayhā, attributed to Abū Maʿashar al-Balkhī. See: David Pingree, ‘AbuMa’shar Al Balkhi’, in
Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), vol. 1, p. 37. Thābit ibn Qurra is said to have
written an essay on the magical use of statues and images; Iraj Gulsurkhī, Tārīkh-i jādugarī (Tehran, Iran: Elmi, 1377),
p. 62. Even a scientist like Avicenna was interested in this matter and authored a book on occult science: Kunūz al-
Mu’zzemīn. Works like Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm and Rutbat al-Ḥakīm penned by Muhammad Ibrāhīm Majrītī (late fifth century
AH) were about magic and talismans.
90
A unique example of the extant metal works is a goblet belonging to the seventh century AH. There is an image of a cow
breastfeeding a calf with a lion sitting on the cow’s back; the lion is depicted as biting on a bump-like thing at the back of
the cow. The whole body of the bovine is covered with talismanic images and amulets. The figure is made using solid
casting in a single mould and is unique in terms of artistic techniques (see: Ward, Islamic Metalwork, p. 32).
91
‘Tilsam’, Encyclopedia of Islam.
92
For more examples see: Akram Qānṣū, Al-Taṣwīr al-Shaʿbi al-ʿArabi (Kuwait: Alam al-Marifat, 1995), p. 46. In the hadith
mentioned earlier in the text, tattooing and figurative art are prohibited, which suggests that figurative art means tattooing
in this hadith.
93
Zamaksharī, Kashshāf, vol. 3, p. 573.
94
Many exegeses mention protection from the dire consequences of sorcery as the historical context (asbāb al-nuzūl) giving
rise to muʿawwadhatayn suras (i.e. suras ‘Falaq’ and ‘Nās’). See, for example: Furāt ibn Ibrāhīm Kūfī, Tafsīr-i Furāt-i Kūfī
(Tehran, Iran: Muʾassisat al-Ṭibāʿa wa al-Nashr, 1410), pp. 620–621; Nuʿmān ibn Muhammad Ibn Ḥayyūn (Qāẓ ī Nuʿmān),
Daʿ āim al-Islām (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisa Āl al-Bayt li Iḥyā al-Turāth, 1385), vol. 2, pp. 138–139.
95
In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, under the heading ‘‫’فضل قراءة القرآن و سورة البقرة‬, the effects of reciting the sura ‘Baqara’ are discussed: the
sura is all blessing, quitting reciting it will bring about remorse and the baṭla cannot manage to overpower it. Muʿāwia
explains baṭla as sorcerer.
96
The solutions endorsed by Islam for resisting talismans, magic and sorcery include Quranic verses and prayers which fall in
the scope of charms (taʿwīdh), amulets (ḥirz) and spells (ruqya). Islamic charms (taʿwīdh) which have mainly a protective
nature include words not pictures—a point that distinguishes them from talismans. Not only have many Muslim authors
prescribed charms with divine words but an assortment of treatises has been written on the issue. Famous examples include
Al-Shajarat al-Nuʿmānīa written by Muḥī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī (d. 638 AH) (Beirut: Dar al-Kitāb al-ʿIlmia, 2004).
 BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 439

were the most widespread following polytheism and idolatry and they powerfully continued
to dominate the Islamic societies well into the middle years of Islam.97

Conclusion
Accepting the theory put forward in this study implies that aniconism in the earlier centuries
of Islam can be dissociated from the realm of visual arts. Also, the emergence and expansion
of Persian figural representation and miniature—the major motifs of which are human and
animal images, epics or the secular life of people—would be interpretable in step with
religious beliefs. Interestingly, the emergence of a type of Miʿrāj-Nāmas (books on the ascen-
sion of Prophet Muhammad to heaven), making the images of religious notables and depict-
ing the faces of imams and prophets as well as part of narration art (naqqāli) devoted to
religious and sacred themes certifies that some groups of Muslim artists did understand
aniconism in a different light and never saw their artistic activities as the ones for which the
hadith predicted eternal torture. Future research can delve into the conceptual turn from
figurative art as forbidden (ḥarām) to considering it ḥalāl during the middle and late centu-
ries—especially between the ninth century AH/fifteenth century CE and our time. Why many
late Islamic jurists cast doubt on aniconism is a question which can be addressed in relation
to the issue at hand. In Irshad al-Ṭālib,98 Jawād Tabrīzī states that the evidence of aniconism
is far from complete and that one cannot issue a fatwa for its prohibition, thus deeming it
makrūh (detestable, in Islamic terminology). Muhammad ʿAbduh, however, emphasizes that
except for cases associated with idolatry, putting the sin of figurative art on an equal footing
with a major sin like homicide does not add up. For him, such prohibition, of a tool that does
not compromise the religion, seems to be unlikely.99 In addition to the issues discussed in
this paper, more exploration can be undertaken about the illustrated talismans and their
relation to the Jewish tradition in light of the data on the history of magical images presented
in this study. It is probable that the activities of dhimmi (non-Muslim) Jewish communities
in the area of magic also contributed to the formation of Muslims’ conceptions about figu-
rative art.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

97
The beliefs based on the impact of magic on human life have been upheld even into the present day. They have not only
preoccupied ordinary people but also jurists and notables; see: Murtiẓā ibn Muhammad Amīn Ansari, Al-Makāsib (Qum,
Iran: Majmaʿ al-Fikr al-Islamia, 1415–20), pp. 232, 234, 239–243, 313. Ansari considers all varieties of magic, sorcery and
talisman forbidden (ḥarām) unless they are used to resist a harmful talisman: the Jannat al-Asmā talisman, for example;
ʿAllāma Ḥasan ibn Yūsif Ḥillī, Mukhtalif al-Shīʿa (Qum, Iran: Muʾassisa Nashr-i Islami, 1413–1419), pp. 96–97. It seems that
there is a significant relationship between the two old types of polytheism/idol-worshipping, on the one hand, and belief
in magic and talismans, on the other hand, which can be the subject of a separate study.
98
Jawad Tabrizi, Irshād al-Ṭālib ili al-Taʿlīḳ ʿalā al-Makāsib (Qum, Iran: 1384/2005), vol. 1, p. 123.
99
Muḥammad ʿAbduh, al-Aʿamāl al-Kāmila lil-Imām Muḥammad ʿAbduh, rev. Muḥammad ʿAmāra (Beirut: Al Muassisat
al- Arabiyya li- Dirāsat va al-Nashr, 1357/1979), vol. 2, pp. 205–206.