Tales from the archives: Love and the Longevity of Charms

In September 2018, The Recipes Project will be six years old. There’s been a lot of blogging on this platform, and we are so grateful to all our wonderful contributors. But with so much material on the site, it’s easy for earlier pieces to be forgotten. So, the editors have decided that, every now and then, … Continue reading Tales from the archives: Love and the Longevity of Charms

Paper as Commodity in Medieval Magical and Medical Practices

By Orietta Da Rold ‘He then looked and saw an amulet sewn into the tarboosh, which he took and opened’ (The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights) The tale of Nur al-Din and his son Hasan is a well-known tale from the Arabian Nights. It tells the story of Nur al-Din’s self-imposed exile in Basra … Continue reading Paper as Commodity in Medieval Magical and Medical Practices

Love and the Longevity of Charms

By Laura Mitchell For a long time I have been interested in the endurance/longevity of charms and recipes over extended periods of time, a topic which Alun Withey addressed in a recent post. The major tropes that make up medieval medical charms, for example, appear with relatively minor variations from the thirteenth through to the … Continue reading Love and the Longevity of Charms