The Apple of Genius. Mandrake (Mandragora spp.) and Black Magic in the Classical Arab-Islamicate Tradition

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study the connections between mandrake (Mandragora spp.) and black magic in the context of the classical Arab-Islamicate tradition. For this purpose, the scarce and fragmentary data preserved in various Arabic treatises on agriculture, pharmacology, toxicology and magic are analyzed. These sources include in particular al-Filāḥa al-nabaṭiyya and the Kitāb al-Sumūm, both of which were presumably translated by Ibn Waḥšiyya (d. 296/909) from Aramaic into Arabic — according to himself from ancient Babylonian sources— and Ġāyat al-ḥakīm wa-aḥaqqq al-natiǧatayn bi-l-taqdīm, whose authorship is usually attributed to the Andalusian Maslama al-Qurṭubī (d. 353/964). Analysis of the information collected in these works reveals that, as with the beliefs linking mandrake to white or natural magic, the beliefs and practices associating the plant with black magic also seem to have originated in the Chaldean-Babylonian and Greco-Egyptian magical traditions of pseudo-Hermetic affiliation. Furthermore, this analysis reveals that these beliefs seem to have been echoed not only in the texts of scholars but also in the collective imagination of at least some Arab Muslim populations and of other ethnic groups and confessions, in some cases surviving to the present day. Finally, it may be concluded —on the basis of the information recorded in Arabic sources— that in the classical Arab-Islamicate civilization, mandrake seems to have been used in a real and effective way as an ingredient in various compounds used in black magic rituals.