This book is the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Museum of Ethnology in Munich (Die Aura des Alif, Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde München, October 2010–February 2011). The objects presented cover a wide range of media besides Quranic manuscripts: ceramics, coinage, architectural inscriptions, calligraphic tableaux, textiles, woollen hats, decorated trucks, modern religious posters, and even script tattooed on human and animal skin. This material is organized around twelve short essays. Some of them are broad introductory or interpretive papers that deal with Arabic calligraphy (Claus-Peter Haase), architectural inscriptions (Lorenz Korn), epigraphic coinage (Stefan Heidemann), and the idea of the “speaking object” (Avinoam Shalem). Others are factual discussions of artefacts in Munich and in other German collections: tombstones (Mohamed Rahim), a late Mamluk lidded metal tray (Doris Behrens-Abouseif), calligraphy from Ottoman dervish lodges (Jürgen Wasim Frembgen), a nineteenth-century Anatolian carpet (Maryam Ekhtiar), and amulets from Iran and Afghanistan dating to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Venetia Porter and Jürgen Wasim Frembgen). Two further essays deal with uses of script in modern-day Pakistan, one on trucks (Jamal Elias), and the other in the world of Sufi shrines (Jürgen Wasim Frembgen). Finally, an essay by the German artist Karl Schlamminger discusses the sensorial and spiritual experience of calligraphy. While it does not break extensive new ground, this beautifully produced volume will be of interest to specialists, notably for presenting previously unpublished material from German collections.