Thursday, 5 March, 2026
4:00pm-5:30pm
Victoria University Common Room
91 Charles St W
Zoom Livestream: register here
In Ottoman Bosnia, esoteric practices across Islam, Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, and Judaism relied on sacred texts as the foundation for making talismans and amulets. Blurring the boundary between text and materiality, such inscribed artifacts not only embodied intertextual links between scripture and ritual culture but also challenged rigid text-object distinctions. Moreover, because such material evidence originated within distinct confessional communities, these objects represent some of the most enduring examples of integrated esoteric practices in the region. While their provenance may appear visibly Christian, Islamic, or Jewish, as indicated by their textual and visual elements, their circulation and use, as many sources indicate, were often transferable and combined. This presentation explores the ongoing prophylactic practice of “double-dipping” across religious divides in Ottoman Bosnia by analyzing several exceptional talismanic objects housed at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina which testify to a long-standing tradition of ecumenical magic in the region.
Amila Buturović is Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at York University in Toronto. A native of Sarajevo, she earned a BA in Arabic Language and Literature at Sarajevo University and an MA and PhD in Islamic Studies from McGill University in Montreal. Her research explores the intersections of religion and culture in premodern Islamic societies, with a particular focus on Ottoman cultural history in the Balkans, especially Bosnia. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombstones, Landscape, and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar (2002); co-editor, with I. C. Schick, of Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History (2007), published in Turkish as Osmanlı Döneminde Balkan Kadınları (2008); and author of Carved in Stone, Etched in Memory: Death, Tombstones and Commemoration in Bosnian Islam (2016). Her current research investigates the written and material culture of health, magic, and the medical marketplace in Ottoman Bosnia, with an emphasis on interconfessional transmission of medical knowledge, talismanic art, and herbalism.
Buturović is currently collaborating with the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina on an exhibition to display the Museum’s rich collection of magical objects and artefacts belonging to the esoteric tradition of Ottoman Bosnia and is writing a book, with Bink Hallum of the British Library, on several large talismanic charts found in the Museum’s collection.
