The Book of Protection (Syriac Charms)

The Book of Protection is the title Hermann Gollancz, professor of Hebrew at University College London, gave to his 1912 edition and translation of three Syriac manuscripts of protective charms. They come from the Church of the East (the ‘Nestorian’ or Assyrian Christian tradition) of northern Mesopotamia and north-western Iran; the most complete, which Gollancz called Codex A, was copied in 1802–3 at a village near Urmia. These ‘books of protection’ were practical handbooks owned by priests or scribes who wrote amulets for clients. Each section is a prayer, exorcism or binding formula against a particular danger: fevers, the evil eye, epilepsy and madness, the pains of childbirth and the demons that attack mothers and infants, snakes, scorpions and rabid dogs, sorcery, evil spirits, and threats to livestock and travellers. The charms are Christian in form, invoking the Trinity, the angels, the saints and the Cross, but they preserve motifs much older than Christianity, including the binding of demons by Solomon’s ring and the legend of a female child-killing demon who is forced to reveal her names. Gollancz added an introduction, notes on difficult words and parallels in Jewish and Islamic lore, and reproductions of the manuscripts’ illustrations, which include mounted saints spearing demons. The collection remains a valuable witness to the long continuity of protective magic in the Middle East.

What it contains

• Codex A: fifty-four sections of prayers, anathemas and charms
• Codex B: twelve sections, including the anathemas of the saints
• Codex C (Cambridge): twenty-nine charms such as binding fever and serpents
• Charms against the evil eye, illness and the demons of childbirth
• Solomon’s ring and its names in the binding of demons
• Illustrations of mounted saints overcoming evil spirits