Math and Magic: A Block-Printed Wafq Amulet from the Beinecke Library at Yale (Report‪)‬

The Beinecke Rare Books Reading Room at Yale University houses an important collection of Arabic papyri and paper documents. Among them are at least two printed texts: P.CtYBR inv. 2016 and P.CtYBR inv. 2367. The latter is a small fragment containing but a few words, and is therefore of little value, while the former is a large fragment of an amulet, and is of considerable interest because it contains two magic squares, that is, squares in which numbers are arranged in such a way as to produce a constant sum in all rows and columns (Ar. wafq, pl. awfaq). Although the use of magic squares in amulets is well attested through theoretical works such as al-Buni's Shams al-maarif al-kubra, and through manuscript specimens, only one other example of a block-printed square is known. (1) What is more, the present piece contains a rare occurrence of a magic square of the order 13 -- perhaps the only such occurrence in all amulets published to date. P. CTYBR INV. 2016