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A 🧵about al-‘Irāqī’s homunculus. One of the most fascinating early magic texts is the ninth-century pseudo-Platonic Kitāb al-Nawāmīs (The Secrets of Plato). A fuller version exists in a Latin translation (12th cent). It is widely known as the Liber vaccae (The book of the cow). 
ʿUyūn al-ḥaqāʾiq wa iḍāh al-ṭarāʾiq (‘The sources of truths and the explication of paths’) by Abū al-Qāsim al-ʿIrāqī (d. 1260) contains twenty-six chapters corresponding to sections in the Liber vaccae, affording us a glance into the Arabic original K. al-Nawāmīs.
The Latin title alludes to an one involving a heinous act to a cow for generating a rational ‘wild animal’ (waḥsh) with a human head, a tail and four feet, two of which will be hoofs; just looking at this creature will bring about illness or death.”
The operator may choose to keep it alive or chop it up for its occult properties. Horrible stuff! But what *is* delightful, are the illustrations of this homunculus found in some manuscripts.
In the chapter On fermentations (al-taʿāfīn) he refers to Ibn Waḥshiyya who tells us in his al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya that the mage ʿAnkabūthā generated a creature which was like a human but lacked speech or understanding.
He received this knowledge from a ‘book on the mysteries of the Sun’ by Asclepius who he had created the Cosmic Man (al-insān al-kawnī). ʿAnkabūthā asserts that the artificial generation of humans in the microcosm is a sublunary reproduction of divine creation.
Ibn Waḥshiyya admits that he “failed [to achieve] an operation like his, whereas ʿAnkabūthā did not fail due to the virtue of [his] knowledge in talismanic and magical works, because in practice the method of generation is the same method of making talismans and magic actually.
For more on this: etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/28641/ Ortega, Sarah (2020) The Liber vaccae/Kitāb al-nawāmīs: Magic in Motion in a Medieval Manual. PhD thesis, University of Leeds.
Image 1: Uyun Chester Beatty Ar. 4019
Image 2: Uyun Vat. Ar. 1426
Image 3: Uyun Wetzstein II 1375
Image 4: Uyun 1459 Manisa Ili Genel Kitaplık
Image 5: WMS Persian 373
Image 2: Uyun Vat. Ar. 1426
Image 3: Uyun Wetzstein II 1375
Image 4: Uyun 1459 Manisa Ili Genel Kitaplık
Image 5: WMS Persian 373
I also want a plushie of the Chester Beatty homonculus.
The Ghāya has some references to experiments for the artificial generation —an art in which the Indians are considered masters. There are close similarities between two recipes found in ʿUyūn and Ghāya—one for creating deadly green scorpions and another for snakes.
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