Asia has been more notorious than perhaps any other division of the
globe for the vast multiplicity and variety of its narratives of
sorcery and magic. I have however been much disappointed in the thing
I looked for in the first place, and that is, in the individual
adventures of such persons as might be supposed to have gained a high
degree of credit and reputation for their skill in exploits of magic.
Where the professors are many (and they have been perhaps no where so
numerous as those of magic in the East), it is unavoidable but that
some should have been more dextrous than others, more eminently gifted
by nature, more enthusiastic and persevering in the prosecution of
their purpose, and more fortunate in awakening popularity and
admiration among their contemporaries. In the instances of Apollonius
Tyanaeus and others among the ancients, and of Cornelius Agrippa, Roger
Bacon and Faust among the moderns, we are acquainted with many
biographical particulars of their lives, and can trace with some
degree of accuracy, their peculiarities of disposition, and observe
how they were led gradually from one study and one mode of action to
another. But the magicians of the East, so to speak, are mere
abstractions, not characterised by any of those habits which
distinguish one individual of the human race from another, and having
those marking traits and petty lineaments which make the person, as it
were, start up into life while he passes before our eyes. They are
merely reported to us as men prone to the producing great signs and
wonders, and nothing more.
Two of the most remarkable exceptions that I have found to this rule,
occur in the examples of Rocail, and of Hakem, otherwise called
Mocanna.