Wisdom of the Ages and Secret of the Sages

What’s Inside Wisdom of the Ages

• The author’s preface, naming the book and the purpose behind it, followed by thirty chapters.
• The nawamis, the talismans behind every marvel, and chapters on incendiary preparations, incenses and fumigations, soporifics, niranjat and concealments.
• The stage marvels of the medieval Islamic world: feats with eggs, rings, bottles, figurines, cups, fire and lamps.
• The methods of the professional deceivers of the author’s age, described so that the reader may know them.
• A practical compendium on inks and dyes, simple remedies, and the properties of plants, animals, stones and minerals.
• Every recited formula, prayer and adjuration in English, ALA-LC transliteration and the original Arabic script, with a glossary of the book’s technical vocabulary.

'Uyun al-Haqa'iq: An Arabic Handbook of Natural Magic and Marvels

Wisdom of the Ages and Secret of the Sages is the complete English translation of Kitab 'Uyun al-Haqa'iq wa-Idah al-Tara'iq, a thirteenth-century Arabic handbook of natural magic and marvels. It is attributed to Abu al-Qasim al-'Iraqi, the Egyptian alchemist and occultist known as al-Simawi. In his preface the author names the book and declares its purpose: having seen that most people displayed tricks in many ways yet showed nothing of the true realities behind them, he set out to gather the whole art in one place.

The nawamis, niranjat and the illusionist’s art

The thirty chapters begin with the hidden workings the author calls the nawamis, the talismans behind every marvel. From there they move through incendiary preparations, incenses and fumigations, putrefactions that breed creatures, soporifics, niranjat, concealments, and the trickery and stratagem of the illusionist. Readers who know the incense chapters of the other books in the series can compare them with the incense recipes of the Arabic grimoires.

Stage marvels of the medieval Islamic world

A long middle section treats the marvels performed before an audience: feats with eggs, rings, bottles, figurines, cups, slaughtered effigies and fire, and lamps whose light makes a gathering see one another with the faces of donkeys or dogs.

The deceivers of the age

The author then turns to the professional deceivers of his time: the astrologers’ devices, the wandering ascetics, the mountebanks, and the rogues who drug and rob travelers. He describes their methods so that the reader may know them. For how the Arabic manuscripts themselves draw the line between the sciences and sorcery, see spiritual science and sorcery in the Arabic manuscripts.

Natural properties: plants, animals, stones and minerals

The closing chapters are a practical compendium: medicines for hunting, inks and dyes, simple remedies, the properties of plants, animals, stones and minerals, and a regimen on the composition of the human being and the care of the body through the seasons.

Cipher signs and how this edition presents the text

Many of the recipes conceal their key ingredients in cipher signs written inline in the text. This edition reproduces every such run exactly where the author placed it, rather than transcribing or guessing at it. Barbarous names are transliterated exactly as written and never translated, and scribal tables are shown as drawn and accompanied by English tables. The volume includes the author’s preface, a translator’s note, a page explaining the conventions used, a two-level table of contents with page numbers, and a glossary.

The text is presented as a historical document of the Arabic occult sciences. It records what its author and his sources believed and practiced, including recipes involving drugs and poisons, and nothing in it is offered as instruction. It is the eighth volume of Arabic Islamicate Occult Manuscripts in Translation; for the rest of the series and the other Arabic grimoires now in English, see the complete guide to Arabic occult manuscripts in English.