The “Magical Qurʾān” of Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)

This article examines the presence and role of the Qurʾān in Athanasius Kircher’s essay De Cabala Saracenica (On the Kabbalah of the Saracens), published in Rome in 1653 as part of his famous work Oedipus Aegyptiacus (Egyptian Oedipus). De Cabala Saracenica is possibly the first analytical study undertaken in the West of magic in the Muslim world, allegedly based on a large selection of original sources, and therefore a significant work in the history of Orientalism and Islamic studies in Europe. Since the Qurʾān plays a central role in Islamicate magic, Kircher’s study abounds with references to the Holy Book of Islam. The article focuses on the presence, analysis, and translation of Qurʾānic phrases and words (the Basmala and other verses, divine names) in this particular work by the learned Jesuit, in which the Qurʾānic text is the raw material of magical operations, sometimes transformed into numbers or materialized in talismanic figures. By demonstrating the actual use of original sources by the author and by reconstructing part of Athanasius Kircher’s Islamicate occult library, it attempts to show that Kircher’s interest in the Qurʾān was not really polemical but primarily historical and antiquarian, and was linked to his interests in the history of Hermeticism, Egyptology, and the occult sciences. The picture that emerges is Kircher’s highly original approach to the Qurʾān in comparison to the main intellectual trends of the time, reflecting the exceptional personality of the thinker.