Journal of the American Oriental Society 130.4 (2010) 607 Math and Magic: A Block-Printed Wafq Amulet from the Beinecke Library at Yale Mark Muehlhaeusler Georgetown University 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. awfāq). Although the use of magic squares in amulets is well attested through theoretical works such as al-Būnī’s Shams al-maʿārif al-kubrā, and through manuscript specimens, only one other example of a block-printed square is known. 1 What is more, the present piece con- tains 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 Provenance: purchased from Alan Edouard Samuel (University of Toronto) in New York, 24 February 1992, who in turn bought the item in Cairo in 1965. Description: block-printed text on light cream paper; in two fragments: one large fragment (ca. 12 x 12 cm), representing the lower right-hand corner of a large sheet (approx. 24 x 24 cm or larger), and another small piece of that same sheet. The verso is blank and smooth; it is devoid of strong creases that would ofer clues as to how the sheet was once folded. However, the print of the recto is clearly visible on this side, and in some places—particularly around the double borders—the ink has printed through to the verso. On the recto, a small gap runs though the print from the lower margin upwards, through the small magic square and its containing circle. This appears to stem from a fold in the paper rather than from a cleft in the print matrix. The print was framed by a band of text enclosed within double borders. Set within this frame, there were a number of separate elements, of which the following remain (counter- clockwise from bottom left): a large magic square, a small magic square enclosed by a ring of text, and parts of at least two circles containing text (see the image on p. 618). The large magic square was apparently positioned at the center of the lower margin, while the smaller circular elements were arranged along the right-hand side of the sheet. Assuming that the elements were laid out symmetrically, one can conjecture that at least three more circles are now lost on the left-hand side of the talisman. In addition, there may have been another large magic square at the center of the upper margin of the sheet. Here follows a description of each of the extant elements in turn. 1. Cambridge University Library Michaelides (charta) E33; image and description in Karl R. Schaefer, Enig- matic Charms: Medieval Arabic Block Printed Amulets in American and European Libraries and Museums (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 76–79, pl. 8.