Panel 4 of the Leiden Conference: Through which rituals do objects get to be

considered as amulets?

A twentieth century manuscript of the K. al-Mandal al- ā ī (Ar. IES 286, Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia): texts on practices & texts in practices*

Anne Regourd
“I l i H A i ”
University of Copenhagen

I. Subject
Al-Mandal al- ā ī is known thanks to several manuscripts which will be presented here.
Going beyond the textual variations, we can say that it is a book on exorcism of the twelve tribes of
jinn who agreed with Solomon that they would submit themselves to the invocations formulated
in accordance with Solomonic magic.
They are the causes of the various diseases and possessions of people or places that can be
cured using Solomonic magic, which addresses itself to the Chief of each tribe. The exorcists'
knowledge of the appearance of the jinn of each tribe and their habits (food, type of settlement,
etc.) is therefore crucial. Some passages in these texts introduce a jinn called al-Aḥmar (the Red) as
the Chief of all the chiefs.
Names (asmā’ i i i ‘ ’ i l i i
texts; they are used in: magic formulae—written and oral—to protect possessed persons and
exorcists (ḥirz), and to prevent places and people from being possessed, to chase the jinn away or
to summon them to a place (ṣ ‘, mandal), in incantations, and on rings. Above all, the exorcism
“al-mandal,” i i il k, i l i tations
(‘ ā’ ) and geometric figures, such as circles, squares and rectangles.1

* I am grateful to Sam Yahya Husayn al-Ahmar, at one time in charge of the manuscripts and libraries of
Yemen at the Ministry of Culture, to the staff of Dar al-makhtutat in 1 ‘ā’, A O H ,