![]() Towards the thirteenth century occult practices began to derive their justifications from Sufi doctrines. A shift of emphasis occurred in the medieval period: from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, legitimisation of occult practices derived mainly from natural philosophy, stressing causation and knowledge of signs as the core principles of magical efficacy. I argue that medieval Islamic occult philosophy distinguished the practices it supported from forbidden siḥr or sorcery by identifying legitimate conditions of acquiring power based on two paradigms: association with natural philosophy, and/or an affiliation with mysticism. ![]() Occult beliefs are embedded in philosophical, scientific, and religious discourses and in this chapter I consider the adaptations and modifications of the metaphysical elements that underpinned occult practices in medieval Islam (eighth to thirteenth centuries), particularly in their relation to the ways whereby nature and the divine were perceived and experienced. ![]() ![]() Such scholarly activity established that occultism is a part of Islamic intellectual history that cannot be overlooked rather it illuminates an essential aspect of the way people thought about the hidden, the extraordinary, and their potential for partaking in the divine and wondrous. In recent years, we have witnessed an efflorescence of research on Islamic esoteric traditions and occult thought. ![]()
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