¹ In 1805, Muhammad Ali Pasha rose to power in Egypt and introduced important changes to the administration, signifying the beginning of a new era. The nineteenth century witnessed wide-scale medical reforms including the institutionalization of medical education, regulation of medical practice and entry into the medical profession, the introduction of quarantine and compulsory vaccinations. The motives and consequences of these medical reforms are the subject of many studies including, Amira el Azhary Sonbol, The creation of a medical profession in Egypt, 1800–1922, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1991; Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha’s men: Mehmed Ali, his army and the making of modern Egypt, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

² Samir Yahya al-Jammal, Tarīkh al-ṭibb wa al-ṣaydalah al-mīsriyah, 5 vols, Cairo, al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah lil-Kitāb, 1999, vol. 4, p. 267; Jirjī Zaydān, Misr al-‘Uthmāniyah, Cairo, Dar al-Hilal, 1993, pp. 178–9; Jalāl Yahyà, Misr al-hadīthah, Alexandria, 1969, pp. 188–91.

³ Antoine-Barthélémy Clot-Bey, ‘Esquisse des maladies les plus graves en Egypte’, in idem, Introduction de la vaccination en Egypte en 1827, Paris, Victor Masson, 1860, pp. 1–4.

⁴ J Worth Estes and LaVerne Kuhnke, ‘French observations of disease and drug use in late eighteenth-century Cairo’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1984, 39: 121–52, p. 140.

⁵ Ibid., p. 139.

⁶ Michael Dols, ‘Medicine in sixteenth-century Egypt’, in Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu (ed.), Transfer of modern science and technology to the Muslim world: proceedings of the international symposium on “Modern Sciences and the Muslim World”, Istanbul, Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, 1992, pp. 213–19.

⁷ Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘Gleanings from an Arabist workshop: current trends in the study of medieval Islamic science and medicine’, Isis, 1988, 79: 246–66, pp. 247–8; Miri Shefer, ‘A tale of two discourses: the historiography of Ottoman-Muslim medicine’, Soc. Hist. Med., 2008, 21: 1–12, pp. 3–6.

⁸ For examples of these revisionist studies, see Michael Dols, Majnūn: the madman in medieval Islamic society, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992; idem, The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton University Press, 1977; Peter E Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic medicine, American University in Cairo Press, 2007.

⁹ Anne-Marie Moulin, ‘La profession médicale dans les pays arabes: vues historiques à long et à court terme’, in Brigitte Curmi and Sylvie Chiffoleau (eds), Médecins et protection sociale dans le monde arabe, Beirut, CERMOC, 1993, pp. 223–45.

¹⁰ Sylvie Chiffoleau, Médecines et médecins en Egypte: construction d’une identité professionelle et project médical, Lyons, Maison de l’Orient Méditeranéen, 1997, pp. 113–14.

¹¹ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Muhammad Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddimah, 3 vols, trans. Franz Rosenthal, New York, Pantheon books, 1958, vol. 3, pp. 111–12.

¹² Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 355–6, and vol. 3, p. 148.

¹³ Ibid., vol. 2, p. 346.

¹⁴ Ahmad ibn Mustafá Ṭāshkubrī’zādah, Kitāb miftāh al-sa‘ādah wa misbah al-siyādah fi mawdū‘āt al-‘ulūm, 2 vols, Cairo, 1911, vol. 1, pp. 285–6; Ḥājjī Khalīfah, Kitāb kashf al-zunūn‘an Asāmī al-kutub wa-al-funūn, 2 vols, Istanbul, 1892, vol. 1, p. 386.

¹⁵ Doris Behrens-Abouseif, ‘The image of the physician in Arab biographies of the post-classical age’, Der Islam, 1989, 66: 331–43, p. 336.

¹⁶ Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Fath Allāh and Abū Zakariyya: physicians under the Mamluks, Cairo, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1987, p. 4.

¹⁷ Muhammad Amīn al-Muhibbī, Khulāsat al-athar fi a‘yan al-qarn al-hādī ‘ashar, 4 vols, Beirut, Dar Sadr, [1966], vol. 2, p. 412.

¹⁸ Ibid., vol. 1, p. 175.

¹⁹ Fuad al-Hifnawi, ‘Al-Ṭibb fi al-azhar qadiman wa hadithan’, in ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-‘Awadi (ed.), Al-Ṭibb al-Islami: al-abḥath a’mal al-mu’tamar al-thani ‘an al-ṭibb al-islami, Kuwait, mu’assasat al-kuwayt lil taqaddum al-’ilmī, 1982, p. 814.

²⁰ Ahmad al-Saigh al-Hanafi, ‘Rīsālah fi mabāhath al-ṭibb’, manuscript held in Dār al-kutub al-Misrīyah, Cairo, tibb 543, fols 10a.

²¹ Al-Muhibbī, op. cit., note 17 above, vol. 1, pp. 203–4.

²² Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 333–4.

²³ Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 140–9.

²⁴ Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 333–4.

²⁵ Gary Leiser, ‘Medical education in Islamic lands from the seventh to the fourteenth century’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1983: 38: 48–75, p. 64.

²⁶ Ahmad al-Saigh al-Hanafi, ‘Risālah fi mabāhath al-ṭibb’, manuscript held in Dār al-kutub al-Misrīyah, Cairo, tibb 543, pp. 18–19.

²⁷ Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, ‘Al-mūfīd fī al-ṭibb’, manuscript held in Dār al-kutub al-Misrīyah, Cairo, tibb 66, pp. 1–2.

²⁸ Harold Cook, ‘Good advice and little medicine: the professional authority of early modern physicians’, J. Br. Stud., 1994, 33: 1–31, p. 4.

²⁹ Ishaq ibn Ali al-Rahawi, Adab al-tabīb, ed. Murayzin Said Murayzin, al-Riyad, 1992, pp. 55–8; Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, Tadhkirat ulī al-albāb wa al-jami’ lil-’ajab wa al-’ujāb, Cairo, 1903, pp. 5–7.

³⁰ Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 4.

³¹ Prosper Alpin, La médecine des égyptiens (1581–1584), trans. R de Fenoyl, Cairo, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1980, p. 14.

³² Al-Muhibbī, op. cit., note 17 above, vol. 3, p. 299.

³³ Ibid., vol. 1, p. 203.

³⁴ Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sakhāwī, al-Daw’ al-lāmi’ li-ahl al-qarn al-tāsi, 12 vols, Beirut, Dar Maktabat al-Hayah, 1966, vol. 6, p. 139.

³⁵ Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-sā’irah bi a’yān al-mi’ah al-’āshirah, Beirut, Dar al-Afaq al-jadidah, 1979.

³⁶ Alpin, op. cit., note 31 above, p. 14.

³⁷ Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalānī, al-Durār al-Kāminah fī a‘yān al-mā’ah al-thāminah, ed. Muhammad Sayyid Gad al-Haq, 4 vols, Cairo, Dar al-kutub al-hadithah, 1966–1967, vol. 2, p. 246.

³⁸ Sami K Hamarneh, Health sciences in early Islam, ed. Munawar A Anees, 2 vols, Blanco, Texas, Zahra publications, 1984, vol. 2, pp. 175–82; Ṭāshkubrī’zādah, op. cit., note 14 above, vol. 1, pp. 285–6; Ḥājjī Khalīfah, op. cit., note 14 above, vol. 1, pp. 386, 390.

³⁹ Pormann and Savage-Smith, op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 114–19; Cristina Alvarez-Millán, ‘Practice versus theory: tenth-century case histories from the Islamic Middle East’, in Emilie Savage-Smith and Peregrine Horden (eds), The year 1000: medical practice at the end of the first millennium, Oxford University Press for the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 2000, pp. 293–304, on p. 293.

⁴⁰ Pormann and Savage-Smith, op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 124–5.

⁴¹ Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, op. cit., note 29 above, vol. 2, pp. 34, 60, 63, 65, 79–80, 89, 121.

⁴² La Décade Égyptienne, Journal Littéraire et d’Économie Politique, 1798–1801, 6: 222–7, as cited in Sonbol, op. cit., note 1 above, p. 9.

⁴³ Nelly Hanna, In praise of books: a cultural history of Cairo’s middle class, sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2003, p. 94.

⁴⁴ Ahmad ‘Īsā, Tārīkh al-Bīmāristānāt fī al-Islām, ed. Ibrahim al-Hawarim, Dār al-Rā’id al-‘Arabī, 1981, pp. 44–5.

⁴⁵ Ibid., pp. 46–7.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 41–3.

⁴⁷ Miri Shefer, ‘Physicians in Mamluk and Ottoman courts’, in David Wasserstein and Ami Ayalon (eds), Mamluks and Ottomans: studies in honour of Michael Winter, London, Routledge, 2006, pp. 114–22, 118.

⁴⁸ Al-Sakhāwī, op. cit., note 34 above, vol. 4, pp. 152–3.

⁴⁹ Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 22–3.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ahmad Shalabī Ibn ‘Abd al-Ghanī, Awdah al-ishārāt fīman tawallá Misr al-Qāhirah min al-wuzarā’ wa al-bāshāt, Cairo, Dar al-Ansar, 1977, pp. 346–7.

⁵² Gabriel Baer, Egyptian guilds in modern times, Jerusalem, Israel Oriental Studies, 1964, p. 37.

⁵³ André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIII siècle, 2 vols, Cairo, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1974, vol. 2, pp. 551, 568; idem, ‘Une liste de corporations de métiers au Caire en 1801’, Arabica, 1957, 2: 157–63.

⁵⁴ I have employed a number of legal documents concerning medical guilds in the seventeenth century. Some of these are published and referred to by Ghazaleh, see note 65 below; for guilds in Ottoman Egypt, see Shuman, note 75 below. Additionally I have based my analysis on a random sample of other unpublished legal documents from the seventeenth century held in the National library of Archives, Cairo.

⁵⁵ Bernard Lewis, ‘The Islamic guilds’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 1937, 8: 20–37; Claude Cahen, ‘Y a-t-il eu des corporations professionelles dans le monde musulman classique?’, in Albert H Hourani and Samuel M Stern (eds), The Islamic city, Oxford, Cassirer, 1970, pp. 51–63; Gabriel Baer, ‘Guilds in Middle Eastern history’, in M A Cook (ed.), Studies in the economic history of the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 1970, pp. 11–30.

⁵⁶ André Raymond, ‘Sinf’, Encyclopedia of Islamic Online, www.brillonline.nl (accessed 12 Feb. 2008).

⁵⁷ Ḥisbah manuals continued to be composed throughout the Mamluk era, see, for example, Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ukhūwah, Kitāb ma‘ālim al-qurbah fī ahkām al-ḥisbah, Cairo, al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah lil-Kitāb, 1976; Sihām Mustafá Abū Zayd, al-Hisbah fī Misr al-islāmiyah min al-fath al-‘Arabī ilá nihāyat al-‘asr al-mamlūkī, Cairo, al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah lil-Kitāb, 1986.

⁵⁸ Raymond, op. cit., note 53 above, vol. 2, pp. 588–600.

⁵⁹ Galal H El-Nahal, The judicial administration of Ottoman Egypt in the seventeenth century, Minneapolis, Bibliotheca Islamica, 1979, p. 57.

⁶⁰ Pascale Ghazaleh, ‘The guilds: between tradition and modernity’, in Nelly Hanna (ed.), The state and its servants: administration in Egypt from Ottoman times to the present, American University in Cairo Press, 1995, pp. 61–74, p. 63.

⁶¹ Library of National Archives, Cairo, Bāb ‘Alī (hereafter BA), 151 (1084/1673) case 401.

⁶² BA, 135 (1068/1657), case 270.

⁶³ Max Meyerhof, ‘La surveillance des professions médicales et para-médicales chez les Arabes’, Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte, 1944, 26: 119–34, pp. 132–5.

⁶⁴ BA, 128 (1060/1649), case 619.

⁶⁵ Pascale Ghazaleh, Masters of the trade: crafts and craftspeople in Cairo: 1750–1850, American University in Cairo Press, 1999, pp. 70–3.

⁶⁶ Amnon Cohen, The guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem, Leiden, Brill, 2001, pp. 82–3.

⁶⁷ Ghazaleh, op. cit., note 65 above, pp. 54–5.

⁶⁸ Ghazaleh, op. cit., note 60 above, p. 68.

⁶⁹ BA, record 99 (1026/1617), case 540.

⁷⁰ Nelly Hanna, ‘The administration of courts in Ottoman Cairo’, in Hanna (ed.), op. cit., note 60 above, pp. 44–59, on p. 53.

⁷¹ BA, 190 (1120/1708), case 1533.

⁷² Raymond, op. cit., note 53 above, vol. 2, pp. 522–6; Abdul-Karim Rafeq, ‘Craft organization, work ethics and the strains of change in Ottoman Syria’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1991, 111 (3): 495–511, pp. 507–8.

⁷³ Dāwūd al-Antākī, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 4.

⁷⁴ Michael Winter, Society and religion in Ottoman Egypt: studies in the writings of ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Sha‘rānī, New Brunswick, Transaction Books, 1982, p. 285.

⁷⁵ Muhsin Shuman, Al-Yahūd fi misr al-’uthmanīyah hattà al-qarn al-tas’ ‘ashar, 2 vols, Cairo, al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah lil-Kitāb, 2000, vol. 2, p. 230.

⁷⁶ BA, 145 (1078/1667), case 624.

⁷⁷ Umaymah Abū Bakr and Hudáal-Sa‘dī, al-Nisā’ wa-mihnat al-ṭibb fī al-mujtama‘āt al-Islāmīyah, Q 7 M-Q 17 M, Cairo, Multaqá al-Mar’ah wa-al-Dhākirah, 1999, pp. 2–4.

⁷⁸ Alpin, op. cit., note 31 above, p. 13.

⁷⁹ Ibid., pp. 369–70.

⁸⁰ Amira el Azhary Sonbol, ‘Doctors and midwives: women and medicine at the turn of the century’, in Daniel Panzac and André Raymond (eds), La France et l’Egypte à l’époque des vice-rois 1805–1882, Cairo, Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2002, pp. 135–48, on p. 138.

⁸¹ Al-Muhibbī, op. cit., note 17 above, vol. 1, pp. 203–4.

⁸² Pormann and Savage-Smith, op. cit., note 8 above, p. 107.

⁸³ Ibn Khaldūn, op. cit., note 11 above, vol. 2, pp. 368–73.

⁸⁴ Sonbol, op. cit., note 80 above, pp. 138–9.

⁸⁵ Esin Kahya and Aysegūl Demirhan Erdemir, Medicine in the Ottoman empire and other scientific developments, Istanbul, Nobel Medical Publications, 1997, pp. 58 &73.

⁸⁶ Raymond, op. cit., note 53 above, vol. 2, p. 493.

⁸⁷ Ghazaleh, op. cit., note 65 above, p. 59.

⁸⁸ Evliyā Çelebi, Siyāhatnāmah Misr, Cairo, al-Hay’ah al-Miṣrīyah al-‘Āmmah lil-Kitāb, 2009, pp. 484–5.

⁸⁹ Matthew Ramsey, Professional and popular medicine in France, 1770–1830, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

⁹⁰ Lucinda McCray Beier, Sufferers and healers: the experience of illness in seventeenth-century England, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.

⁹¹ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ismā‘il, Ṭibb al-rikkah, 2 vols, Cairo, Mạtba‘at al-Baahīyah, 1892–1894.

⁹² Gary Leiser and Michael Dols, ‘Evliyā Chelebi’s description of medicine in seventeenth-century Egypt’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 1987, 71: 197–216, pp. 203–5.

⁹³ Muḥammad Is ḥāqī, Kitāb Lạtā’if akhbār al-uwal fī-man taṣarrafa fī Miṣr min arbāb al-duwal, Al-Mansūrah, Maktabat al-Īmān, 2000, pp. 13–15.

⁹⁴ For a discussion of the non-Islamic origins of many popular beliefs, see Edward Westermarck, Pagan survivals in Mohammedan civilization, Amsterdam, Philo Press, 1973.

⁹⁵ Edward William Lane, An account of the manners and customs of modern Egyptians, American University in Cairo Press, 2003 (lst ed. published in 1836–7), pp. 57–8.

⁹⁶ For more information on the evil eye in prophetic medical literature, see ‘Abd Allāh al-Sharqāwī, Fath al-mubdī bi-sharh mukhtasar al-Zabīdī, 3 vols, Cairo, Maktabat Mustafā al-Bābī al-Halabī, 1920, vol. 3, p. 292; Cyril Elgood, ‘Ṭibb-ul-Nabbi or medicine of the Prophet’, Osiris, 1962, 14: 33–192, pp. 152–6; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah, Medicine of the Prophet, trans. Penelope Johnstone, Cambridge, Islamic Texts Society, 1998, pp.123–31.

⁹⁷ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ismā‘īl, op. cit., note 91 above, vol. 1, p. 96.

⁹⁸ Jacqueline Chabbi, ‘Jinn’, Encyclopaedia of Qur’ān, Leiden, Brill, 2001–2006, vol. 3, p. 43; D B Macdonald, P N Bortav, K A Nizami, P Voorhoeve, ‘Djinn’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Leiden, Brill, 1960–2008, vol. 2, p. 546.

⁹⁹ ‘Ali ibn Burhān al-Ḥalabī al-Shāf’ī, ’Iqd al-marjān fīmā yata’allaqu bi-al-jānn, ed. Mustafa ‘Ashur, Cairo, Ibn Sīnā, 1988, pp. 68–73; Dols, Majnūn, op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 211–23.

¹⁰⁰ Dols, The Black Death, op. cit., note 8 above, pp.109–20.

¹⁰¹ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ismā‘il, op. cit., note 91 above, vol. 1, pp. 45–6.

¹⁰² Dāwūd Al-Anṭākī, op. cit., note 29 above, vol. 2, p. 120.

¹⁰³ Michael Winter, Egyptian society under Ottoman rule, 1517–1798, London, Routledge, 1992, p. 130; idem, Society and religion, op. cit., note 74 above, pp. 88–125.

¹⁰⁴ G S Collin, ‘Baraka’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., note 98 above, vol. 1, p. 1032; Dietrich Von Denfer, ‘Baraka as basic concept of Muslim popular belief’, Islamic Studies, 1976, 15: 167–86; L Gardet, ‘Karama’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., note 98 above, vol. 4, p. 615; Westermarck, op. cit., note 94 above, pp. 120–1.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Sha‘rānī, Lawāqih al-anwār fī tabaqāt al-mashhūr bi-al-Tabaqāt al-kubrā, Cairo, Maktabat al-Ādāb, 1993, p. 273.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., p. 719.

¹⁰⁷ Winter, op. cit., note 74 above, pp. 184–7.

¹⁰⁸ Winter, Egyptian society, op. cit., note 103 above, pp. 148–9; ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, ‘Ajaib al-athar fī al-tarājim wa al-akhbār, 4 vols, Cairo, Madbuli Library, 1997, vol. 3, pp. 119–20.

¹⁰⁹ Lane, op. cit., note 95 above, p. 238.

¹¹⁰ B G Martin, ‘A short history of the Khalwatiyah Order of Dervishes’, in Nikki R Keddie (ed.), Scholars, saints and Sufis: Muslim religious institutions in the Middle East since 1500, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972, pp. 275–95.

¹¹¹ Toufic Fahd, ‘Sihr’, Encyclopedia of Islam, op. cit., note 98 above, vol. 9, p. 567; Lane, op. cit., note 95 above, p. 207.

¹¹² For more on this debate, see Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘Magic and Islam’, in Francis Maddison and Emilie Savage-Smith (eds), Science, tools and magic, London, The Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 59; Fahd, ‘Sihr’, op. cit., note 111 above, p. 567; Toufic Fahd, ‘Le monde du sorcier en Islam’, in Sources orientales, vol. 7, Paris, du Seuil, 1966, pp. 157–206.

¹¹³ Lane, op. cit., note 95 above, pp. 263–4.

¹¹⁴ Ḥājjī Khalīfah, op. cit., note 14 above, vol. 2, pp. 114–15; Michael Dols, ‘The theory of magic in healing’, in Emilie Savage-Smith (ed.), Magic and divination in early Islam, Aldershot, and Burlington, VT, Ashgate/Variorum, 2004, pp. 87–101, pp. 98–9; ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ismā‘il, op. cit., note 91 above, vol. 1, pp. 27–32, 63.

¹¹⁵ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ismā‘il, op. cit., note 91 above, pp. 22–3; Lane, op. cit., note 95 above, pp. 217–18; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah, op. cit., note 96 above, pp. 132–42.

¹¹⁶ ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ismā‘il, op. cit., note 91 above, pp. 16, 18–19, 55, 86.

¹¹⁷ Dols, op. cit., note 114 above, p. 88.

¹¹⁸ Ḥājjī Khalīfah, op. cit., note 14 above, vol. 2, p. 21.

¹¹⁹ Leiser and Dols, op. cit., note 92 above, pp. 199–200.

¹²⁰ Al-Muhibbī, op. cit., note 17 above, vol. 1, p. 96.

¹²¹ Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, op. cit., note 29 above, pp. 125–31.

¹²² Manfred Ulmann, Islamic medicine, Edinburgh University Press, 1978, p.101.

¹²³ Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, op. cit., note 29 above, vol. 2, p. 92; Ahmad al-Qalyūbī, Tadhkirat al-Qalyūbī, Cairo, 1890, p. 8.

¹²⁴ Lane, op. cit., note 95 above, p. 8; Shams al-din Muhammad Al-QawSūnī, ‘Al-Maqālah fī Ḥajar al-bādzahr al-haywānī’, manuscript, Dār al-Kutub al-Misrīyah, Cairo, Egypt, tibb 117.

¹²⁵ C Burnett, ‘Astrology’, in Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson (eds), Encyclopaedia of Islam, Leiden, Brill, 2010, vol. 3, http://www.brillonline.nl.lib.exeter.ac.uk; Ḥājjī Khalīfah, op. cit., note 14 above, vol. 1, p. 57.

¹²⁶ The religious debates, which originated in the medieval period, centred on whether the celestial bodies indicated or actually caused the sublunar movements and on the extent of their influence on events in human lives. For more on this debate, see Yahya J Michot, ‘Ibn Taymiyya on astrology: annotated translation of three fatwas’, in Savage-Smith (ed.), op. cit., note 114 above, pp. 270–340.

¹²⁷ Is ḥāqī, op. cit., note 93 above, p. 309.

¹²⁸ Lane, op. cit., note 95 above, pp. 217–64; George Saliba, ‘The role of the astrologer in Islamic society’, in Savage-Smith (ed.), op. cit., note 114 above, 341–63.

¹²⁹ Lane, op. cit., note 95 above, pp. 217–64; Saliba, op. cit., note 128 above.

¹³⁰ The Arabs recognized geomancy as a complex divinatory art. It is believed that the angel Jibrīl taught it to the Prophet Idris, who in turn taught it to Tumtum al-Hīndī, a legendary figure supposed to be living in India. Khalaf al-Barbarī, a contemporary of the prophet, learnt the art after travelling to India and studying the books of Tumtum al-Hīndī. Khalaf taught the art to a number of students. The name of a North African, Abū Abduallah al-Zanātī, figured as one of the authorities, which explains the common belief that North Africans were generally talented in geomancy. Emilie Savage-Smith and Marion B Smith, Islamic geomancy and a thirteenth-century divinatory device, Malibu, Undena Publications, 1980, pp. 1–3; G Vadka, ‘Idrīs’, Encyclopedia of Islam, op. cit., note 98 above, vol. 3, p. 1030; J Pederson, ‘Djbrīl’, ibid., vol. 2, p. 362.

¹³¹ Anon., Dhayl Tadhkirat Dawūd, published as an annex to Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, Tadhkirat, op. cit., note 29 above, p. 109.

¹³² ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ismā‘il, op. cit., note 91 above, vol. 2, pp. 3–5.

¹³³ Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 45–6.

¹³⁴ Dāwūd al-Anṭākī, op. cit., note 29 above, vol. 1, p. 103.