An Arabic version of Qusṭā b. Lūqā’s De Physicis Ligaturis?

After the short version (52a), published in 2011, the critical edition of two other versions (52b and 52c) of the Epistle of Magic ascribed to the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ is to come out soon as part of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity series at Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies. Although it occupies the last position in the corpus and has sometimes been presented as the conclusion of the work as a whole, there are various reasons to assume that this epistle on magic was not part of the original plan of the Brethren and that therefore none of these three mutually exclusive versions should be regarded as integral to the Ikhwānian encyclopaedia. This paper will be concerned with one particular section of the 52b version – a version whose heterogeneity of content and intricate manuscript tradition are particularly notable. In this section, found in many authoritative manuscripts but lacking in others and not part of the Beirut edition, the author discusses the power of imagination (wahm) and the use that physicians from Greece and from India made of it to help curing some illnesses, generally by means of spells attached to parts of the body. We shall argue that this section is, if not the Arabic original itself, an early testimony in the tradition of the De Physicis Ligaturis, a work written by the Christian physician Qusṭā b. Lūqā (d. 912) and which was thus far only known through its Latin translation, presumably by Constantine the African (d. 1087)