A Jurassic bivalve from Morocco with a religious Islamic inscription

This study investigates the apotropaic meaning of a fossil purchased in 1994 in the souk of Marrakesh. The specimen is an internal mould of an infaunal Jurassic bivalve ( Pleuromya cf. uniformis [J. Sowerby]) bearing a religious inscription in high relief, that has been identified as the Sunni formulation of the shahāda : ‘There is no god but Allāh, [and] Muḥammad is His Prophet.’ This represents the first documented example of a religious talisman carved onto a fossil within Islamic culture. Unlike a previously known Cretaceous belemnite from Palestine bearing non-religious incised Arabic script, the present specimen displays a clearly devotional and protective intent. Contextual and documentary evidence suggests that the fossil functioned as a talisman intended to neutralise the magical powers attributed to fossils by certain Berber tribes, for whom marine fossils were used in witchcraft and divination and were believed to possess vital qualities. The inscription of the shahāda can be interpreted as an act of Islamisation and resignification of fossils, affirming divine omnipotence and rejecting autonomous natural causality. The object was likely produced in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, possibly in response to wider debates on evolution, using locally sourced Jurassic fossils from the Atlas Mountains.