The present edited volume is based in part on papers that were delivered
at an international conference, which was held at the American
University of Beirut (AUB) on 56 December 2013 and was organized by the
Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) in association with the Center for Arab and
Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at the American University of Beirut
(AUB). The conference carried the title that has been retained for this
present volume as: The Occult Sciences in Premodern Islamic Cultures.
Not all the chapters that constitute the present volume were presented
at the conference, and some of the papers that were delivered at the
conference have not been included in this volume. It is therefore more
prudent to think of this book as a collection of studies rather than as
a strict proceedings volume. It is also evident that some of the
chapters are expanded and adapted versions of the papers delivered at
the conference. In pre-modern Islamic cultures, a number of arts and
practices that are associated with the occult sciences were seen as
epistemic expansions of the field of scientific knowledge in its various
branches. The sciences of the occult dealt with what was taken to be of
the order of non-observable realities that were studied by pre-modern
natural scientists. This included all phenomena that could not be
explained on the basis of the four classical elements. The sciences of
the occult were situated between natural philosophy and metaphysics, and
at times blended with these in more direct forms as was the case with
astronomia ('ilm al-nujum), which combined mathematical astronomy with
astrology, or the bent on arithmology and numerology that accompanied
the sciences of arithmetic and number theory. An examination of these
pre-modern forms of knowledge can itself further enrich our modern
understanding of what constitutes the limits of science and its
epistemological bearings in the deliberations of philosophy of science.
