L'usage talismanique du Coran

Abstract

Au sein des populations musulmanes, il est souvent fait recours à l'action efficace prêtée au livre saint, le Coran. Par ailleurs, des témoignages coraniques et des traditions relatives au Prophète accréditent l'idée de pouvoirs particuliers inhérents à certains passages coraniques. Une littérature savante s'est emparée du sujet et a développé des traités de magie talismanique, où le texte coranique constitue un matériau privilégié. L'important reste cependant que le Coran n'est pas mis en œuvre dans son état brut mais qu'il est soumis à un travail de transformation qui agit sur la forme et sur le sens, selon des procédés couramment employés dans les techniques magiques.

What's (not) in a leather pouch? Tracing Islamic amulets in Asante, Ghana

“…Islamic charms and amulets, as well as their surrounding discourses and practices, have been and are quite common across Islamic societies and history (Gruber 2016; Hamès 2001; 2007; Savage-Smith 2004). Yet, their study is scattered across separate literatures, so that one finds several strands of argument and separate regional research but no coherent debate on them.…”

“…Lastly, despite the West African exceptionalism that Ware argues for, the embodied knowledge and healing practices that he writes about are by no means confined to Africa. Muslims throughout the world and history have been widely engaged in and have debated such practices, which are not ‘African’ but part of the ‘discursive tradition’ of Islam (Hamès 2001; cf. Bowen 1993; Flueckiger 2006; Marsden 2005; McIntosh 2009).…”

Enchantment, migration and media: Marabouts in Senegal and in the Netherlands

“…Notwithstanding a widespread fear of charlatans and ongoing debates among Muslim scholars and reformists, marabouts’ services formed an accepted discipline – also called falakiyyat – well into the 19th century and still exists in some parts of the Islamic world, at least among Sufi scholars in West Africa (Brenner, 2001; Hamès, 2001; Loimeier, 2009; Makdisi, 1981; Tamari, 1996). By and large, practitioners and consumers of marabouts’ services such as Arabic divination, astrology and numerology, identify these services as being Muslim activities (cf.…”