I have had always had a fascination with the variety of astrological, magical and prognosticative manuscripts available in Arabic. Living in the post-Enlightenment modernity era, we scholars tend to think of astrology as a quaint feature of past pre-scientific thinking and now abandoned the New Age enthusiasts. There are, however, thousands of Arabic manuscripts that are magical, in more than the usual sense. These offer a window, however mysterious, into the concerns and fears of the past. I recently came across an extraordinary website, Digital Occult Manuscripts, which has uploaded images of numerous Arabic occult texts. I cannot find information on who puts out the project, but it is an amazing source of documents (although usually just a few pages of each manuscript) and a joy just to browse through. Here is one of the images, a talismanic man from a 12th century text by al-Ghazali.
Illustration from السر الرباني ÙÙŠ العالم الجثماني / al-Sirr al-Rabbani fi Al-‘alam al-Juthmani
Author: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali / أبو Øامد الغزالي
Year: 505 Hijri / 1111 Gregorian
Language: Arabic
Writing style: Talik
Number of pages: 130 page