Kitāb al-nawāmīs

The Kitāb al-nawāmīs is an Arabic book of magic written in the late ninth century in a Ṣābian milieu.

Liana Saif suggests "book of the sacred secrets" is a better translation of Kitāb al-nawāmīs and accurately reflects its content.

Liber tegimenti is a reference to the preface, wherein the original title (Kitāb al-nawāmīs) is said to be a tegimentum (covering) concealing the true meaning.

[9] David Pingree labels it "psychic magic" because its uses body parts and fluids which souls were believed to inhabit.

[11] The preface falsely claims that the work is Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq's translation of Galen's synopsis of Plato's Laws.

[12] An actual translation or adaptation of Plato's Laws based on Galen's synopsis and attributed to Ḥunayn is partially extant.

[15] The ascription to Plato was considered suspect by the earliest Latin writers to comment on it, William of Auvergne (d. 1249) and Nicole Oresme (d. 1382).

"[16] After a preface,[3] the Kitāb al-nawāmīs is divided into two books, called maior (greater) and minor (lesser).

"[20] The experiments in the second book mostly concern fire and its maniuplation (such as candles that create optical illusions), although chapters 1–3 and 28–30 are about marvellous seeds and inks, respectively.

After summarizing the contents of the first book of the Kitāb al-nawāmīs, it explains that the magic works "by means of the effects of images, the employment of spiritual powers, and the implanting of their powers in the motionless forms which consist of elemental substances so that they ebcome moving spiritual (forms) producing marvellous effects."

[22] This underlying principle is derived from a statement in Plato's actual Laws, which is cited in the preface to the Kitāb al-nawāmīs, that the soul "is the cause of change and of all motion for all things".

[23] The closest Arabic text to the Kitāb al-nawāmīs is the ʿUyūn al-ḥaqāʾiq wa iḍāh al-tarāʾiq ('sources of truths and explications of paths'), written by the alchemist Abū al-Qāsim al-ʿIrāqī in the thirteenth century.

Nicole Oresme expressed similar views, although he objected specifically to the use of sperm, poisons and other "abominable mixtures" in magic, while the use of stone and plant matter was acceptable.

A single short fragment of three pages can be found at the end of manuscript Arabe 2577 in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

A fragment not much longer was reported by Paul Kraus from a manuscript privately held by the al-Ḥanjī family of Cairo.