Hamsa: naming, attribution and homonyms

The hand-shaped khamsa, the Indic haṃsa waterbird and the Persian Khamsa poem cycle share a spelling in English. What each refers to, and why the attribution of the hand symbol is contested.

Scope of these accounts

Community or institution: Christianity
Community or institution: Islam
Community or institution: Judaism
Community or institution: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Community or institution: Victoria and Albert Museum
Period: 19th century
Period: Contemporary (2000 onwards)
Region: Iberian Peninsula
Region: North Africa
Region: Tunisia
Region: Turkey
Region: West Asia

Direct answer

The hand-shaped amulet known as a khamsa — from the Arabic word for five — is recorded across several communities of North Africa and West Asia.

The Victoria and Albert Museum's catalogue entry for a silver-gilt hand amulet made in Izmir between 1850 and 1870, inscribed in Hebrew for Jewish use, ranks the hand first among Muslim amulets in North Africa, notes that it was found in Syria too, and records Christian and Jewish neighbours in those regions taking it up.

That entry gives a direction — Muslim use first, others following — which not every account agrees with; this page reports it as one museum's account rather than as a settled history. In English the spelling collides with at least two unrelated referents: haṃsa, the waterbird of Indic art and literature, and the Khamsa, the five-poem cycle of Nizami of Ganja.

Museum catalogues use all three senses. This page keeps them apart by authority record rather than by spelling, and it does not settle where the hand symbol began.

Dated objects on record

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Date	Object	Catalogue record
circa 1850	Woven silk sash with a repeated hand motif. The V&A catalogue entry links hands, and designs made of five parts, to countering the evil eye.	V&A 809-1852
1850–1870	Silver-gilt hand amulet inscribed with the Hebrew word Shaddai, made for Jewish use. The V&A catalogue entry ranks the hand first among Muslim amulets in North Africa and records Christian and Jewish use of it in the same regions.	V&A 100-1873

Three referents that share a spelling

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Authority	English spelling	Example record	Refers to	Script	Source language
Wikidata Q15268353	hamsa / khamsa	V&A 100-1873, Izmir 1850–1870, silver gilt with Hebrew Shaddai inscription	A hand-shaped amulet recorded in North Africa and West Asia and used across Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities there (V&A 100-1873)	Arabic, Hebrew	Arabic khamsa, five; Hebrew hamesh
Wikidata Q3126595	hamsa / haṃsa	Met 30.32.8, Goose (Hamsa) with Floral Tail, Khotan Kingdom, 6th–7th century	A waterbird — goose or swan — of Indic art and literature, unrelated to the hand amulet	Devanagari	Sanskrit haṃsa
Met accession 13.228.9.1	Khamsa	Met 13.228.9.1, Khamsa (Quintet) of Nizami of Ganja, Iran, 15th century	The five-poem cycle of Nizami of Ganja, a literary work	Perso-Arabic	Persian, from the same Arabic root for five

Sources for the statements on this page

Victoria and Albert Museum, London — museum no. 100-1873: silver-gilt hand amulet inscribed with the Hebrew word Shaddai, Izmir, 1850–1870 — Locator: museum no. 100-1873, catalogue entry
Victoria and Albert Museum, London — museum no. 809-1852: woven silk sash with a hand motif, Tunisia, c. 1850 — Locator: museum no. 809-1852, catalogue entry
Kendi in the Form of a Hamsa (Gander) — Locator: Met accession 1989.238.53, titled Kendi in the Form of a Hamsa (Gander)
Pair of Ear Plugs with Hamsas (Wild Geese) — Locator: Met accession 1987.142.290a, b, titled Pair of Ear Plugs with Hamsas (Wild Geese)
Goose (Hamsa) with Floral Tail — Locator: Met accession 30.32.8, titled Goose (Hamsa) with Floral Tail
Khamsa (Quintet) of Nizami of Ganja — Locator: Met accession 13.228.9.1
The British Museum — museum no. 2014,6009.1: silver hand amulet (khamsa), Morocco, 1890s — Locator: museum no. 2014,6009.1, curator's comments (with a 1930s Palestinian hand amulet)
von Kemnitz, Eva-Maria & Inloes, Amina. The Hand of Fatima. BRILL, ISBN 9789004526235 / 9789004526228, DOI 10.1163/9789004526235 — Locator: DOI 10.1163/9789004526235, monograph bibliographic record
The Hand of Fatima — Crossref list of the 10 chapter DOIs, titles and page ranges — Locator: DOI 10.1163/9789004526235_002 through _010: chapter titles and page ranges

Contemporary design use

The hand form is in wide contemporary use in fashion and design, and the standard monograph closes with a chapter on exactly that. Contemporary circulation is recorded here as a fact about the present-day market and carries no weight on questions of origin or attribution.

Where sources disagree

The hand amulet goes by more than one name. The British Museum's catalogue records two for the region it covers, North Africa and the Middle East: khamsa, after the word for five, and Hand of Fatima, after the Prophet's daughter. It ties neither name to a single community, and says its own examples may have belonged to Muslim or to Jewish owners.

Other names tied to particular communities appear in popular accounts; none of them has a museum or scholarly source on file here, so this page does not list them. Two further claims circulate widely and are not adopted on this page: that Hand of Fatima is a colonial-era coinage rather than a local term, and that the five fingers stand for the five pillars of Islam.

Both may well be correct. No text on file carries either one, and the standard monograph that is on file is represented here only by its chapter list, so neither is stated here. The V&A catalogue entry itself carries a direction — Muslim use first, with Christian and Jewish neighbours following — that a pre-Islamic-origin account would dispute.

Citing one museum is not the same as settling the question, and this page does not settle it. Two layers are worth keeping apart. The V&A entry describes circulation in the nineteenth-century Ottoman world: who was using the form, and where. It says nothing about origin, and this page does not read it as if it did.

There is no source here at all for the older layer, meaning where the hand form came from before any of these communities took it up, so the page states the circulation and leaves the origin open rather than letting one museum's account stand in for both.

Accounts below conflict. They are shown side by side; none of them is presented here as the settled answer.

How LumaLark uses this form

LumaLark treats the hand form as shared across the communities that use it and names it neutrally rather than assigning it to one of them. It does not state that an object protects anyone, does not attach any religious authority to a product, and does not present a piece as carrying a blessing.

Where a customer's own tradition gives the form a specific name, that is the customer's to say, not the shop's.

Brand intention expression

These reviewed links show which LumaLark intention themes cite this cultural record. A link records that the theme references this context; it does not mean the historical or cultural practice described above endorses, requires, or was created for that theme.

Amulets & Cultural Symbols — Symbolic expression
Protection & Boundaries — Symbolic expression