Magic-medicinal bowls (chihil kilid, batil al-sihr)

In an article in the journal Bonyan-e Honar, Asadollah Joudaki Azizi studies a class of vessel known in later Islamic centuries as the tas/jam-i chihil kilid ("bowl of forty keys") or jam-i batil al-sihr ("bowl that annuls magic"). ¹ He places them among what he calls humanity's constant efforts to ward off evil and foretell the unseen, and counts some of these practices, such as talismans, astrology and magic, among illusions, while recognising the artistic value of the objects. ^{1 3 4}

• He traces their origin to the legends of early Iranian kings such as Jamshid and Kaykhusraw, and sees simple pottery examples appearing in the late Sasanian period with inscriptions seeking sustenance and protection from evil. ⁴
• He holds that their use almost lapsed in the early Islamic centuries because of ideas that disapproved of such things, and that on pottery bowls prayers, maxims, moral sayings and hadiths replaced the earlier texts. ^{5 4}
• He dates the first metal examples to the Zangid atabegs, among them a bowl made by order of Nur al-Din Mahmud Zangi bearing his name, prayers and verses; they multiplied under the Safavids and remained popular into the last century. ^{5 4 6}

• Most are of brass, which the author explains by its resistance to damp and by the belief that it revealed arsenic poisons by changing colour. ⁶
• The inscriptions usually begin with Surat al-Fatiha on the rim, then all or part of the Throne Verse; common passages come from al-Baqara, al-Ma'ida, al-Qalam, al-Nasr, al-Ikhlas, Ta Ha, Yusuf and Sad, with the Beautiful Names, blessings on the Prophet ﷺ and the Imams, and the prayer Nadi Aliyyan in the first ring of the inner base; the author is describing Safavid Iranian examples. ⁶
• They are written in thuluth, naskh and nasta'liq, engraved and in the siyah qalam technique, centred on the twelve signs of the zodiac and sometimes the seven planets, and rarely name maker, patron or year. ^{7 6}

The author says people sought from them protection from the evil eye, the undoing of magic, healing, protection of women in childbirth and newborns, children and marriage; a prayer written on paper was dissolved in the bowl's water and drunk, or water was poured from it forty times over the head of a new mother or infant in the bath. ^{2 6 8}