Nikola Pantić is Postdoc Assistant at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna, and Permanent Fellow of the Center for Religious Studies, Central European University, Vienna.
""This book probes directly and robustly the relations between official state religion, Muslim jurisprudence and magical practices as they actually occurred, untroubled by common clichés found in both contemporary sources and in modern scholarship."" Aziz Al-Azmeh, Central European University ""This book is a vivid contribution to the study of thaumaturgy and magic in Ottoman Islam. In eighteenth-century Damascus, Sufism was recognized by Sunni Muslims as producing wonders. Based on a thorough analysis of baraka conceived as praeternatural grace, it sheds original light on charismatic power in religion, but also in political life. Nikola Pantic’s book should be read by all those interested the power of extraordinary phenomena to regulate the sacred."" Jean-Louis Fabiani, Central European University