Magical Booklet

This partially surviving magical booklet was preserved in a collection of manuscripts from medieval Damascus. This work contains spells and recipes, written in Aramaic, with instructions for use in Arabic. The linguistic distinction likely indicates that the spells themselves were of older provenance than the work that contains them. The magical formulas make requests for love and wisdom, among other things, though sometimes the precise purpose is difficult to identify. Here, the abbreviation “NN” denotes a placeholder for an individual’s name. The midline dots in the text indicate indecipherable letters.