The Human Magnet Stone

The bahit, or human magnet stone, was widely accepted as real by geographers and historians of the Middle Ages. This stone – sometimes also called baht – reputedly had the power to attract human beings to it, who would then be held fast to it until they died. The bahit was associated with the legendary City of Brass, described in the Thousand and One Nights. The lost city's exterior walls were said to have been built of solid brass blocks, but the interior walls were believed by some to have been constructed of bahit stone. In fact, the City of Brass is sometimes called El Baht.

The stone is described by various writers, among them Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘Umari (1301-1349) of Damascus, who authored an unconventional encyclopedia – a combination universal history and world geography – called Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar, “Pathways of Vision in the Realms of the Metropolises.” This work has never been published in its entirety. But a section that has been published (Section One, ed. Ahmed Zaki, Vol. 1, Cairo 1342/1924) talks about the bahit stone…

All mountains are branches of the range which encircles most of the inhabited world. It is called Jabal al-Qaf and is the mother of mountains, for they all stem from it….
 This side-chain of the Jabal al-Qaf is called at its beginning [i.e. the eastern end] al-Mujarrid. Then it extends until it reaches, in the western section, a longitude of 65 degrees from the beginning of the Maghreb….
 A chain called the Mountains of the Moon branches off here. The Nile rises in it. It is said that glittering stones are to be found there which gleam like white silver. They are called sanjat al-bahit. Anyone who sees one laughs and cleaves to it till he dies. It is also called the “human magnet” (maghnatis al-nas). The author of [the] Jughrafiya [“Geography” – presumably Ptolemy is meant here] says that Aristotle mentions it in his Book of Stones (Kitab al-ahjar)….
 There are numerous accounts of the origins of the course of the Nile. Al-Mas‘udi and others give worthless information. The most commonly expressed view is that somebody or other has actually seen its source, and each writer puts forward a reason for the failure to find out the truth about it.
 Some say: “Some persons reached the mountains [where the Nile rises], climbed them, and saw beyond them a heaving sea with water black as night split by a river white as day which entered the mountains on the south and came out on the north, where it divided into branches at the dome of Hermes, which is built there. They assert that the builder of this dome was Hirmis al-Haramisa (Hermes of the Hermeses), who is called the Threefold in Wisdom [Trismegistus], while others claim that he is Idris (peace be upon him!), who reached that place and there built a dome; and they say that he is called the Threefold because he combines three things: prophethood, wisdom, and kingship.”
 Others say: “Some persons climbed the mountain, but each time one of them stepped forward he would laugh, clap his hands, and fling himself down the far side. The rest feared to suffer the same fate, and so came back.”
 Others make this assertion: “What these persons mentioned about actually saw was the bahit stone. Everyone from among them who saw it laughed, stepped forward, and cleaved to it until he died.”

The celebrated geographer al-Idrisi mentions the human magnet stone in the well-known work he penned for the Norman King of Sicily, Roger II – Nuzhat al-mushtaq fî ikhtiraq al-afaq (“The Pleasure of Him Who Longs to Cross the Horizons”), completed in 1154….

[The First Section of the Second Clime]
 On the coast of the sea that stretches away from these [the Fortunate Isles] and other islands, ambergris of excellent quality is found. From its coasts, too, comes the baht stone, which is famous among the people of al-Maghrib al-Aqsa. Single specimens of that stone are sold at great price, especially in the country of the Lamtûna, who relate that if a person sets out to fulfill some need, and takes hold of such a stone, he will succeed in full. They assert, too, that it is good for tongue-tie….

A Syrian writer, al-Dimashqi (1256-1327), briefly mentions the bahit stone in Nukhbat al-dahr fî ‘aja’ib al-barr wa-’l-bahr, “The Choice of the Age, on the Marvels of Land and Sea”…

[The sources of the Nile are ten streams which flow into two lakes situated beyond the Equator.]
 According to Qudama one of the ten streams, the most westerly, is called Aliha. Its water issues from beneath the bahitstone, the human magnet (maghnatis al-nas).

The earliest reference to the bahit or baht stone that I’ve been able to find appears in a work by historian-geographer Ibn al-Fakih al-Hamadhani, who wrote in the late 9^th and early 10^th centuries. Ibn al-Fakih mentions the human magnet stone in his Kitab al-Buldan (“Book of the Countries”),  a work which remains largely untranslated but is summarized in the Compendium libri Kitab al-Boldan (Leiden: 1885). Ibn al-Fakih applies the name baht to a lost city in the North African desert that he later identifies with the City of Brass…

Alexander constructed the city of Baht in the Maghreb: it was called The Splendid or The Brilliant. It was constructed of a stone called el baht. Anyone who looks at it loses his mind and laughs in a manner so prolonged and reckless that he perishes.

Later on, he mentions the city again:

Among the marvelous things of the region of Sous (Moroccan), it is necessary to mention the Wadi r remel (valley or river of sand), and the city of el Baht, which is located in one of the deserts of this country.

Finally, in the same book, Ibn Fakih merges the baht stone with the story of the City of Brass in a longish account that begins as follows. (At the time this book was written, “al-Andalus” was sometimes used as the name not only for Arab Spain but for Northwest Africa as well.) …

Among the wonders of al-Andalus is al-Baht, which is a city lying in one of its deserts. When the report of this city, and especially of treasures contained in it, had reached Abdu’l-Malik ibn Marwan, he wrote to Musa ibn Nusair, who was his governor in the Maghrib, ordering him to make a journey thither….

Ibn al-Fakih’s story – and the later “City of Brass” tale in the Arabian Nights– both relate that soldiers who scaled the walls of the city looked inside, laughed loudly, in some cases clapped their hands, and then jumped inside the walls.... These actions suggest the presence of the human magnet stone…

Folklorist Mai I. Gerhardt notes this phenomenon and discusses its further development in The Art of Story-Telling (Leiden: 1963), her impressive literary study of the Arabian Nights…

Both Yakut (d. 1229) and the wonder-loving Kazwini (d. 1283), when copying Ibn el-Fakih’s account, introduce it by the following paragraph:

 Ibn el-Fakih reports that according to the most ancient authors, the City of Brass was constructed by Dhou el-Qarnein [Alexander the Great], who deposited there his treasures and the products of his science, and prevented entry by some enchantments, which halted visitors. He constructed its interior of the bahtstone, which is for men what a magnet is for iron; whoever views it is forced to laugh at the brilliance and hurl themselves towards it: they then cannot detach themselves from it. One finds it in the deserts of Andalusia [ = el-Andalus].
                                (quoted by Gaudefroy-Demombynes, 101 Nuits, p. 333.)

 And Kazwini complacently adds some more stone-lore: the baht-stone has the colour of white marcassite; a certain little bird, when alighting on it, robs it of its power. – Yakut and Kazwini expressly identify the City of Brass with the city Ibn el-Fakih calls el-Baht; Kazwini specifies that its centre was occupied by a pillar of baht-stone. They keep, on the authority of Ibn el-Fakih, the attribution to Alexander, but at the same time reproduce the inscription speaking of Solomon; and, of course, the episode of the lake. It would seem as if, with these 13^th-century authors, the legend enters its period of decadence; no attempt is made to sort out conflicting information (as Abu Hamid still tried to do) and the mysterious is replaced and “explained” by the marvellous.
 The progress of this decadence is strikingly attested by the compilers of the next century. The Persian-writing Mustawfi (1340) [also a native of Kazwin, and sometimes designated Kazwini II] who follows Kazwini and an otherwise unknown History of the Maghreb [probably 12^th century], expressly locates the city in Spain. According to him the expedition of explorers was sent out by one of the Ommayad caliphs of Cordoba, while Musa ibn Nusair, earlier, dispatched fishermen to bring up the Solomonic jars from the lake. He then continues:

Near the City of Brass, there had been set up two stone tablets on which were inscribed certain details concerning the (future) prophets – peace be upon them all – and mention here was also made of our Prophet – upon whom be peace – and many profitable admonitions and precepts were added thereto. The above account is taken from the History of the Maghreb, and Qazvini [Kazwini] states that the reason why every one at the sight of the City of Brass fell to laughter, was that therein lay a mountain of Bahat(or Laughing) stone. Now the peculiarity of this stone is, that when any man casts his eyes thereon, he falls into convulsions of laughter, and he laughs so violently that he forthwith dies; therefore the demons have great content in the presence there of this stone.
 (Mustawfi, The geographical part of the Nuzhat el-Qulub, transl. cit.,p. 260.)

 The inscribed tablets near the city are a new detail, recalling the seven marble tablets of the Spanish narrator in the ‘1001 Nights’-story. For the rest, Mustawfi’s data are garbled; but he gratefully reproduces Kazwini’s explanatory information on the marvellous stone.
 A few generations later, el-Bakuwi (d. 1403) still relies on Kazwini, as the wording in his paragraph shows:

Medinat al nehas. It is also called Medinat al Saphar(the City of Brass); it is famous: it is said that it was built by Dhoulcarnain, who deposited his treasures there with talismans to keep them untouched. In the interior there is a baht stone, which is the magnet for men; it is called such because if a man approaches too close, he is drawn to it and attached to it like iron to a magnet; he cannot free himself and he dies; this magnet is found in the deserts of Andalusia.
 The circuit of this city is some forty parasangs, the height of its walls five hundred cubits; it has no gates, its foundations are impregnable; what is more certain is that it was built by Solomon, son of David. Musa ibn Nasr, lieutenant of Abdol-malik, made his army approach it, and set up a ladder with which he reached the top of its walls, and he sent a man inside who never came back; he [Musa] entered also, and never returned; (but we leave there all the fables that are produced on this city). [The bracketed sentence at the end is due to the translator, who makes a point of suppressing the “fables” of his original. It is a pity to be thus deprived of whatever information the – very mediocre – el-Bakuwi still had to offer.]
                                     (El-Bakoui, Exposition…; transl. cit., p. 524.)

 As far as can be ascertained from the abridged and condensed eighteenth-century translation, this account seems to represent a shrivelled state of the legend. The familiar details, and notably also the baht-stone, are still there, but the whole is by way of losing whatever consistency it used to possess. Alexander and Solomon are mentioned, as builders of the city, almost in the same breath; the statement that Musa himself entered the city and never returned [I wonder if the translation is correct here] is preposterous, seeing that his whole career has come down in history.

[Source: Gerhardt, Mia I. The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights.Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963.]