Shii News – Kāshifī’s Manual of the Occult Sciences and Its Safavid Afterlife – M. Subtelny

<section class="abstract"><h2 class="abstractTitle text-title my-1" id="d70e2">Abstract</h2><p>This article examines a short Persian work on the occult sciences of illusionism and conjuring (<em>sīmiyā</em>, <em>rīmiyā</em>) by the renowned late Timurid-era polymath Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1504–1505), titled <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em>, which came to serve as the core of a greatly expanded interpolation, composed during the high Safavid period, that covered the remaining occult sciences of talismanic lettrism (<em>līmiyā</em>), astral magic (<em>hīmiyā</em>), and alchemy (<em>kīmiyā</em>). Although Kāshifī himself was not a Shiʿi, he was adopted by Safavid Shiʿi culture on account of his imamophilism, Sufism, and esotericism that transcended confessional boundaries. His <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em> was by his own account inspired by the early ninth/fifteenth-century Sufi master, Persian poet, and occultist Qāsim-i Anvār. The bulk of the interpolation is devoted to the talismanic arts and is supposedly based on a work called <em>Ḥall al-mushkilāt</em>. The anonymous interpolator, whose identity has long been a mystery (as scholars assumed incorrectly that Kāshifī was the author of the interpolation, which retained the title <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em>), appears to have been Jalāl al-Dīn Munajjim (d. 1028/1619), the court astrologer of the Safavid shah ʿAbbās <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">I</span> (r. 995–1038/1587–1629). He describes in detail the talismans fashioned for various purposes, often for well-known political figures, by such eminent Shiʿi religious scholars and Sufis as Shaykh Bahāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿĀmilī (d. 1030/1621), who allegedly based many of his operations on those of the legendary Indian master known as Ṭumṭum-i Hindī. Kāshifī’s <em>Asrār-i qāsimī</em> offers a fascinating glimpse into the arcane and secretive arts of illusionism and conjuring, while the Safavid interpolation of his work provides a rarely documented perspective on the exercise of political power in Iran and demonstrates the great esteem in which the occult sciences were held at the highest levels of Safavid society.</p></section>