Magic in Islam between Religion and Science

This review essay on a recent book on magic in Islam (Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt or Secrets of the Higher World and the Lower edited by Günther and Pielow), attempts an examination of the state of the field and lays out desiderata for future study. Anything known about Islamic magic is still vulnerable to the masses of unexamined data (several hundreds of thousands of surviving texts and artifacts many uncatalogued, most unexamined). This book is the first attempt at a multi-disciplinary examination of Islamic magic, and will function as a crucial reference going forward. Nevertheless, it mostly lingers on core thematic areas established by earlier scholars, disconnected from the more extensive study of western European cognate practices.