An amulet wards off evil, but a talisman is meant to attract luck
People often treat the words as twins, yet they point in opposite directions. An amulet defends its owner against harm, while a talisman is supposed to draw good fortune in. For one tenth-century Baghdad mathematician, making talismans was the noblest branch of astronomy, demanding perfect timing and an undistracted mind.
A talisman is any object credited with religious or magical power to protect, heal or even harm the person it is made for. Many are small enough to carry, though some are built permanently into buildings. The name has travelled a long way: French borrowed it from Arabic tilasm, which came from the Greek telesma, a word for completion, a rite or a payment, rooted in a verb meaning to complete or perform a ritual.
Thabit ibn Qurra, an Abbasid mathematician of the 10th century, was regarded as a leading authority. He ranked the science of talismans above geometry and philosophy as a route to wisdom, according to a 12th-century Latin version by John of Seville and Limia. Adelard of Bath's translation of the same work insisted the maker needed deep knowledge of astronomy and astrology, because an object had to be finished at a favourable celestial moment. Metals such as gold, silver, bronze or lead suited a charm for winning affection, while pitch, tar and bitumen served the hostile kind.
Across the Islamic world talismans worked at every social level. Slips of parchment carrying Qur'anic verses were rolled inside objects, even though the religion discouraged magic. Talismanic shirts, whose oldest surviving examples date from the 15th century, bore holy names, pictures of sacred sites or astrological signs, and some were designed to sit under armour. A bronze bowl from Syria made around 1200 carries inscriptions promising help in childbirth and against scorpion stings.
Medieval European doctors used them too, if reluctantly. The historian Lea Olsan notes that charms were rarely a first choice because Galen's medicine could not justify them, yet references appear often in medical writing. An Ottoman cloth talisman of 1822 in the Art Institute of Chicago shows the plan of a mosque; Turkish households usually hung an inscribed tile or board above the front door instead, and the museum knows of only two such pieces made from fabric.
Source: Talisman
