Dr Michael Zellmann-Rohrer: List of publications

The present article seeks to establish the text and interpretation of a fragment of an early modern Syriac text whose content belongs to the genre of what is conventionally termed magic.1 The fragment has survived in the binding of a later codex. The text, of which an edition with translation and commentary follows this introduction, is a guide for a procedure to summon up a mantic dream. The instructions are in Syriac (both language and script), but the central invocation addresses several supernatural powers in Arabic, here rendered in Syriac script (Garšūnī),2 before concluding in Syriac. As the rest of this introduction will be concerned to show, its makeup is yet more complex, as it participates in a tradition of such recipes for compelling a significant dream attested from the late ancient ritual papyri of Roman Egypt, and well-represented in late ancient and medieval Jewish magical treatises and handbooks.