Falnama: The Book of Omens 2009016752

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falnama THE BOOK OF OMENS Massumeh Farhad with Serpil Bagc1

With contributions by Maria Mavroudi, Kathryn Babayan, Cornell H. Fleischer, Julia Bailey, Wheeler M. T hackston, Jr., and Sergei Tourkin

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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2009016752

Arthur M. Soclcler Gallery Head of Design and Production: Karen Sasaki Editors: Nancy Eickel, Jane lusaka Catalogue Design: Robert L. Wiser Exhibition Graphics: Nancy Hacskaylo Image and Photo Services: John Tsantes Rights and Reproduction: Cory Grace Exhibition Coordinators: Cheryl Sobas. Kelly Swain

Typeset in Whitney

Printed in the United States of America

0 Frrer Gallay of Smithsonian

Art a11d

Artlwr ,\-1. Sacklrr Gtlllrr)'

8

Foreword, Elahe Mir-Djalali Omidyar

rll)

��-) s-s

11

Foreword, Julian Raby

13

Note to the Reader

14

Sponsors

15

Map: Ottoman and Safavid Worlds in the Sixteenth Century

19

The Art of Bibliomancy

•

Jo, Y'J

Serpil Bagc1 and Massumeh Farhad

27

The Falnama in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Massumeh Farhad and Serpil Bagc1

41

The Manuscripts

Massumeh Farhad and Serpil Bagc1 43

CONTENTS

The Dispersed Falnama

53

The Topkap1 Persian Falnama

6o

The Dresden Falnama (E445)

68

The Falnama of Ahmed 1

77

Exhibition Catalogue

78

Word as Protection

97

(TSM H.1702)

(TSM H.170 3l

Abrahamic Traditions

117

Islamic Traditions

148

Idolatry

153

Sages. Heroes. and Villains

173

The Zodiac

185

The Hereafter

198

Beyond the Falnama

218

Other Folios from the Dispersed Falnama

2 21

Islamic Divination in the Context of Its "Eastern" and "Western" Counterparts

Maria Mavroudi

2 31

Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences: Prophecies at the Ottoman Court in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries

Cornell H. Fleischer

245

The Cosmological Order of Things in Early Modern Safavid Iran

Kathryn Babayan

256

Appendix A: Reproductions and Translations of the Dispersed Falnama, H.1702, and H.1703

Translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr., and Sergei Tourkin 306

Appendix B: Comparative Tables of Omens

309

Endnotes

332

Bibliography

34 1

Contributo rs

341

Photo credits

342

Index

(

.J

/� ... •

'*

0

•

• ..

•

Foreword Elahe Mir-Djalali Omidyar, Ph.D. President, Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute

The Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased and proud

them, the Smithsonian's Galleries of Asian art are opening

to contribute to the exhibition Fa/nama: The Book of Omens

up new vistas on large areas of artistic, religious, and historical

organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler

understanding. We would like especially to congratulate Dr. Julian

Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. Indeed, this multi-authored,

Raby for his support and encouragement of this exhibition project.

fully illustrated catalogue represents not only an enlightened

and Massumeh Farhad, Ph.D., and the staff of the Freer and

introduction to the exhibition but also a major scholarly

Sackler Galleries for a remarkable exhibition and accompanying

contribution in and of itself.

catalogue. Thanks are also due to the wide variety of public

The Fa/nama focuses on the art of divination, featuring a series

and private collections that contributed the more than sixty works

of illustrated texts constituting major works of art notable for their

of art included, many of which have never previously been

monumental size, spectacular compositions, and unusual subject

exhibited publicly.

matter. These extraordinary manuscripts draw on imagery from Abrahamic, Islamic, and literary traditions. They thus offer new

The Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is a nonprofit organization supporting the preservation, transmission, and

perspectives on the daily concerns and religious doctrines of

instruction of Persian culture. The Institute does this through

people who lived five hundred years ago. The manuscripts were

partnerships with other nonprofit institutions. including major

created during the reign of the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasb in Iran

museums such as the Freer and Sackler Galleries. In selecting

and at the height of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, during the

projects to support, we are guided by those values and principles

sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Accordingly, they also

that uphold a community: fairness, tolerance, respect, and the

afford new insights into the rich artistic and cultural exchanges

desire to improve communication and understanding among

between the Persian and Ottoman empires, even at the height of

people from diverse backgrounds. In our view, the Fa/nama

their political rivalry.

exhibition and this catalogue are exceptional from all of these

The Fa/nama manuscripts to date have remained largely unpublished. In offering the first major exhibition ever devoted to

perspectives and represent major advances in promoting not only artistic achievement but also intercultural understanding. .J I

8

Deta1l, The Poet Sa'di Dressed as o Monk, from the H.1703 Fofnamo. Turkey, Ottoman period. ca. 1610-16. Topkap1 Palace Museum. Istanbul, H.1703. r.6b (cat. 36)

Forewo rd Julian Raby, Director Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Whether by calculating the pos1t1on of stars. consulting dream

this exhibition. For the past decade, Mary and Farhad Ebrahimi's

manuals, or studying natural and manmade signs, the art of

support has been essential in allowing us t o keep a steady

divination has been a universal practice since Babylonian times.

spotlight on Persian art and culture at the Freer and Sackler, and

One of the most extraordinary devices used for prognostication in

we are deeply grateful t o them. Both the Smithsonian Scholarly

sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Safavid Iran and Ottoman

Research Fund and the Barakat Trust deserve our special gratitude

Turkey was a series of large-scale, bold l y conceived i l l ustrated

for providing research support. We also thank the PARSA

texts known as the fa/nama. Only four such "monumental"

Foundation for its contribution. H i s Excellency Nabi ?ensoy, the

volumes have survived, and these are the focus of this exhibition

ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to the United States, and

Fa/nama: The Book of Omens. On one page, Adam and Eve ride out

Mrs. ?ensoy, were most helpful with their advice, as was K1vtlc1m

of paradise o n the backs of a spectacular, dragon-like serpent and

Ktl1�, the first secretary, with logistical matters. The Arthur M . Sackler Gallery would like to thank the following

an equally fanciful peacock while startled angels look on. On another page, the angel of death 1 n the guise of a ferocious gray

for generously lending to Fa/nama: The Book of Omens and assisting

demon drops out of the sky to pounce on Shaddad ibn Ad, who,

with its implementation. In Ankara, Turkey: the Directorate General

accord ing to the Koran, had transgressed by daring to recreate

for Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and

paradise on Earth. These remarkable pictorial auguries and their

Tourism of the Republic of Turkey; Orhan Duzgun, the director

accompanying text shed light not only on a little-known aspect of

general of museums and cultural assets of the Ministry of Culture

Safavid and Ottoman artistic achievement but also on the shared

and Tourism of Turkey; and Nilufer Ertan, Director of EU, Foreign

interest of shahs, sultans, and viziers i n pictorial prognostication

Relations and Cultural Activities Section; i lber Ortayl1, president of

at the end of the first Islamic m i l lenniu m.

the Topkapt Palace Museum; Zeynep Atba�. curator of manuscripts;

Fa/nama: The Book of Omens IS the first attempt to reunite the

Ay�e Erdogdu, acting director; Aysel C:otelioglu, deputy director;

extraordinary illustrations of the so-called Dispersed Safavid

Sibel Alpaslan Ar�a. curator of textiles; Ahmet Ayhan, curator of

Falnama, the most widely published copy. By considering its extant

arms and armor; and Selin i pek, assistant to the director. We also thank Parviz Ta navoli in Canada; Kjeld von Folsach,

folios in relation to those of three other, largely unknown, sixteenth-century Falnamas, these works can be seen i n their

director of the C . L. David Collection, Copenhagen; Nasser D.

proper artistic, cultural, and religious context. The project has

Khalili, and Nahla Nassar, curator of the Nasser D. Khalili

been further enriched by a rare cross-disciplinary collaboration

Collection, London; Henri Loyrette, director; Sophie Makariou,

among specialists of Byzantine, Safavid, and Ottoman history,

chief curator of the Department of Islamic Art; and Charlotte

culture, art. and science. The exhibition project has benefited from a number of

Maur y, assistant cu rator, Musee du Louvre, Paris; Stefan Weber, director of Staatliche Museum zu Berlin, Museum fUr lslamische

individuals and foundations, whose support and encouragement

Kunst; Alessandro Bruschettini, Italy; Michael Ryan, d i rector, and

during a financially uncertatn pertod has been vital. We are

Elaine Wright. curator of the Islamic collections, Chester Beatty

particularly grateful to an exceptional a nonymous donor, who

Library, Dublin; Cisar Menz, director, and Claude-Janine Ritschard,

threw the project a lifeline at a cntical time. Lee Folger and the

former curator, Musee d'art et d'histoire, Geneva, Switzerland; His

Folger Fund deserve a very special thanks; from the inception of

Highness Karim Aga Khan and Benoit Junot at the Aga Khan Trust

the Falnama exhibit1on proposal several years ago, they have

for Culture, Geneva; and Mohammad Afkhami, also of Geneva. I n the United States, we acknowledge Tom Lentz, Elizabeth and

encouraged and supported the project and have been essential to its realization. We are also indebted to the Roshan Cultural

John Moors Cabot director and Mary McWilliams, Norma Jean

Heritage Institute for underwriting the publication of the

Cal derwood curator of Islamic and later Indian art, Harvard A r t

catalogue. Ralph Minassian and the Hagop Kevorkian Fund have

Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Michael Govan, director,

continuously shown interest in initiat ives at the Freer and the

and Linda Komaroff, curator of Islamic art, Los Angeles County

Sackler Galleries, and we gratefully acknowledge their support for

Museum of Art; Arnold Lehman, director, and Ladan Akbarnia,

Detail, The Angel of Death Descends on Shaddod 1bn Ad, from the dispersed Fa/nama, Iran, Qazvin, Safav1d penod, m1d-1550s-early 1560s. Arthur M Sackler Gallery, 51986.252a (cat. 45)

Hagop Kevorkian associate curator of Islamic art, Brooklyn

of art and departmental chair at Haciteppe University, Ankara;

Museum, New York; William Griswald, director, and William

Cornell H. Fleischer, Kanuni Suleyman professor of Ottoman and

Voelkle, curator and department head of medieval and

Modern Turkish studies, University of Chicago; Maria Mavroudi,

Renaissance manuscripts. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York;

professor of history, University of California, Berkeley; Wheeler M.

Philippe de Montebello, former director, Stefano Carboni, former

Thackston, retired professor of Persian, Harvard University; and

curator in the department of Islamic art, Navina Haider, associate

Sergei Tourkin. professor, St. Petersburg State University, Russia.

curator, and Maryam Ekhtiayar, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jane Lusaka and Nancy Eickel deserve a special thank you for

New York; and James A. Welu, director, Worcester Art Museum,

editing the catalogue; I also acknowledge the tireless efforts and

Worcester, Massachusetts.

dedication of the book's designer, Robert L. Wiser. Over the years,

We received assistance from scholars Hossein Afshar, James

several assistants and volunteers have helped with different

Allan, Gonul AIpay Tekin, Nurhan Atasoy, Mohsen Ashtiyani,

research aspects of this project and their work is deeply appre­

Mr. and Dr. Ebadollah Bahari, Manijeh Bayani, the late Craigen

ciated; they include Louise Caldi, Robert Foy, Marianne Henein,

Bowen, Filiz (agman, Sheila Canby, Yolande Crowe, Yorgos Dedes,

Carol Huh, Amy Landau, Amy Repp, Tess Kutasz. and Amal

Tulun Degirmenci, Debra Diamond, Teresa Fitzherbert, Almut von

Sachedina. In Istanbul, we would also thank Hadiye Cangok�e for

Gladiss, Catherine Glynn, Lisa Golombek, Oleg Grabar, Zeynep

her beautiful photographs and in Ankara, Bayez1t, Yasemin,

Y urekli Gorkay, Charlotte Huygens, Thomas Haffner, Jeremy Johns.

ismihan, Kaan, and K1smet Bagc1 for their advice and assistance.

Cemal Kafadar, Mehmet Kalpakll, Jens Kroger, Fatma Kutlar, Amy

Finally, the staff of the Freer and Sackler deserves special thanks.

Landau, Tom Lentz, Maryam Masoudi, Gulru Necipoglu, Hartmut

Their expertise, commitment, hard work, and sense of humor have

Oetwin-Feistel, Oya Pancaroglu, Scott Redford, Karin Ruhrdanz,

been critical to this project's realization and success. But above

Nabil Saidi, Emilie Savage-Smith, John Seyller, Abolala Soudavar,

alii thank Massumeh Farhad, who conceived the project and

Baki Tezcan, Zeren Tamnd1, Michael Rogers, Olga Vasilyeva,

masterminded its progress for these past several years, and who is

Armen Tokatlian, and Bahattin Yaman.

also the principal author of the catalogue. Combining research with

This catalogue would not have been possible without the

all her other duties as chief curator and curator of Islamic art at the

contributions of Kathryn Babayan, associate professor of Iranian

Freer and Sackler Galleries has been very demanding, and I can

history and culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Julia

only guess that there have been times when she opened a book in

Bailey, former editor of

12

Foreword

Muqarnas;

Serpil Bagc1. professor of history

the hope that it would contain an augury of good fortune.

Note to the Rea d e r

The majority of dates in this catalogue are those of the Christian

according to a simplified version of the International Journal of

calendar. When a year appears according to both the Christian

Middle Eastern Studies.

and the Islamic calendars, the Islamic one, which is based on a

Certain familiar words, such as Koran and vizier, follow common

lunar cycle, usually is given in parentheses, e.g., 1592 (1000 AH).

English spellings. All Koranic references are from Yusuf Ali's

It is identifiable by an H (of the Hijra), which refers to the migration

translation, and chapters (suras) and verses (aya s) are separated

of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca t o Medina. This marks

by a colon (e.g., 2:35).

year 1 on the Islamic calendar and is equivalent to the year 622. Diacriticals and vowel marks have been omitted from this

For measurements of works of art, height precedes width. When appropriate, the diameter is identified by (diam.). A "folio" refers to both the back and front of a single sheet

volume. The letters ayn (') a n d hamza ('), which do not have an equivalent i n the Roman alphabet, do not appear at the beginning

of paper; a "page" denotes one or the other side. The front (recto)

or end of words but are retained in a medial position. For

is identified as "a," and the back (verso) as "b," bearing in mind

Ottoman names and titles, a Turkish transliteration system has

that Persian, Ottoman, and Arabic scripts are written and read

been used; Arabic a n d Persian words are largely transliterated

from right to left.

Contributing authors MF

SB

CHF

JB

Massameh Farhad

Serpil Bagc1

Cornell H . Fleischer

J ulia Bailey

List of Abbreviations AKTC

D Coli

MdL

SB

Aga Khan Trust for Culture,

The David Collection,

Musee du Louvre. Paris

Staatsbibliothek Berlin

Geneva

Copenhagen

MFA

S Coil

AMSG

EMR

Museum of Fine Arts. Boston

Abolala Soudavar Collection,

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,

Museum o f Ethnography,

Washington, D.C.

Rotterdam

ex-Binney

FGA

Formerly in the collection

Freer Gallery of Art,

of Edwin Binney 3rd

Washington, D.C.

BM

HAM

Brooklyn Museum,

Harvard Art Museum,

Brooklyn, New York

Cambridge, Massachusetts

BODL

IUL

Bodleian Library, Oxford

Istanbul University Library

U n iversity, Oxford, England

LACMA

Bsc

Los Angeles County

Alessandro Bruschettini

Museum of Art

Collection, Genoa, Italy

MAH

CBL

Musees d'art et d'histoire,

Chester Beatty Library,

Geneva

Dublin

MIK Museum fUr lslamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin MMA Metropolitan Museum o f Art, New York NDK Nasser David Khalili Collection, London NL National Library of Ankara P Coil Private collection PML Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

Houston SLUB Sachsische LandesbibliothekStaats- und Universitatsbibliothek, Dresden T I EM Turkish and Islamic Museum, Istanbul TSM Topkap1 Palace Museum, Istanbul ex-Tu l i n Formerly i n the Tulin Collection WAM Worcester Art Museum, Worcester. Connecticut

Sponsors

This publication is made possible with the generous support of:

�t� �t� - -

Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute

Fa/nama: The Book of Omens is produced in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and on view October 24, 2009 through January 24, 2010.

The exhibition is made possible through the generosity of an anonymous donor and The Folger Fund.

Support is also provided by the Hagop Kevorkian Fund and Mr. and Mrs. Farhad Ebrahimi.

Additional support is provided by the Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Program, The Barakat Trust and The Packard Humanities Institute.

14

Ottoman and Safavid Worlds in the Sixteenth Century

60

Lake Ysyk

UZ B E K S

40

Tashkent

Ed�rne

Istanbul

.

Burn

Khiva

GEORGIA

•

Bukhara

Amasya

• Baku

OTTOMANS

Chaldiran

Erzuru m

ANATOLIA Loke Von

Lob

• Tabriz

Mashhad •

• Tehran

by the Ottomoru

•

•

H1madan

• Tripoli

Territory contested by !he Uzbeks

•

KHURASAN

Varam•n

Herat

Qum Q•n

Ka shan

Damascus

• Baghdad Karbala

Nlshapur

Qazvin

Temtory contested

SYRIA

Balkh

•Ardab1l

Sultan1ya Aleppo

•

Merv

AZARBAYJAN

Konya

•

• Samarqand

SAFAVIDS

•

Najaf: Kufa

• Jerusalem

Isfahan

Alexandria

•

Cairo •

Yazd

Basra

• Shiraz

EGYPT

Bandar'Abbas (Gombrun)

•

Hurmuz

• Medina Muscat

OMAN •

Jedda

• Mecca

20

0 50

Overleaf· . Detail I · • mom RIZO Saves the Sea People, f rom the dispersed Fa/nama, Ira n, Qazvin, period, mid-lSSo s-early 156os, Musee du Louvre, Paris, MAO 894 (cat. 28)

. Sa favtd

0

100 200 300 400 100

200

Kilometers

300

400

Mdes

W,

the Moghol empe1m Homoyoo w" ''""'"'"

invasion of Kashmir in 1552-53 (960 AH), he turned to the Koran for guidance. He opened the volume at random, as is prescribed, and his eyes fell upon the chapter of Joseph (sural ai-Yusuf). His advisors convinced him that it was a bad omen, and the emperor abandoned the invasion.' A few years later, in November 1555 (Zulhijja 962

AH),

Humayun decided to recapture India's "eastern parts" (mamalik-i

sharqi), i.e., Bengal, and consulted the Divan of Hafiz. This time he received a favorable omen and proceeded with the preparations. 2 In the Nusrelname (Book of victory), an account of the 157B Ottoman military campaign against Georgia and Shirvan, the author Mustafa Ali maintains that the commander-in-chief Lala Mustafa Pasha stopped in Konya to visit the tomb of Mawlana Jalal al-Oin Rumi (died 1273). During his visit. he requested a prognostication for the outcome of the campaign and randomly opened a volume of Rumi's Malhnavi. His eyes fell on a verse referring to the Macedonian ruler Alexander (Iskandar), also known as Zulqarnayn, and his conquest of the legendary Mount Qat, which was viewed as an auspicious omen (fig. 1.1)3 These and many other anecdotes attest to the popularity of bibliomancy, the art of divination through text.' among the ruling elites of the Islamic world. Whether using the Koran, the lyrical verses of Hafiz (died 1390), or Rumi's Malhnavi, bibliomancy was meant to offer insight into the world of the unseen (al-ghayb), guide seekers in their actions and intents, assure them of their successes, and forewarn them of calamities. The illustrated

Falnamas, which depend on painted images for prognostication, belong to this long-established tradition. In much of the Islamic world, the Koran has served as the most

At least by the f1fteenth century, the pract1ce of Koran1c prognostication became more formalized and codified as special tables, referred to as falnamas, appeared at the end of Korans,

important divinatory text since the late Umayyad period

a convention that became increasingly popular in the sixteenth

(661-750)• Although the practice was condemned intermittently

century.• Variously titled "Divination of the Sacred Text" ({al-i

by Islamic orthodoxy, the tradition prevailed and permeated all

kalam-i majid), "Divining the Word of God" (la{a'ul kalam-i Allah),

levels of society. Certain rules had to be established, however, and

or simply "of the Word" (min kalam), such guides were particularly

practitioners developed a range of "licit" methods for consulting

popular in Korans produced in sixteenth-century Safavid Shiraz

the Koran, which were adapted and modified for other texts,

(fig. 1.2)10 Moreover, their titles, which often incorporated terms

including illustrated Falnamas•

such as fa/ or tafa'ul, suggest that the line between consulting the

One of the accepted techniques of Koranic prognostication is

Koran for divine guidance and making a choice (istikhara) or for an

known as istikhara, derived from the Arabic root kh-ay-r, which

augury (la{a'ul) were blurred at best. Most of these fa/nomos are

implies a choice or option and the 1dea of entrusting God w1th that

wntten 1n verse and orgamzed 1n nchly illummated geometric

selection by submitting to his will. According to one tradition, even

tables and grids. Although they were particularly popular in Iran,

the Prophet Muhammad taught his disciples about istikhara in

several late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ottoman Korans with

much the same way he had instructed them about the suras

divination manuals also are known. They are copied in elegant

(chapters) of the Koran' Some scholars have argued that while

nasla'liq verse, but the overall design is more restrained than those

seeking God's guidance in making a choice was permissable,

of the Shirazi manuscripts (see cat. 9).

divination (la{a'ul) was strongly condemned. The term, which relates to the word fa'/ in Arabic and fa/ in Persian and Ottoman,

Koranic fa/nomos begin with clear instructions: After performing ritual ablutions and finding a complete volume of the Koran, the

implies consulting the sacred text to seek an augury or insight into

seekers were to recite the Faliha once, the sural a/-ikhlas three

the future. As such knowledge is God's exclusive privilege, this

times, followed by the throne verse (Koran 2:255). Only then could

particular method was considered contrary to Islam.'

they solicit divine guidance. If using the simplest method, the

20 · Essay 1

Fig. 1.1. Gather1ng at Konyc1 shnne complex, Nusretname, Turkey, 1584. TSM H.1365, f.]6a

(reigned 1382-1410) and includes a Fal-i anbiya (auguries of

seekers would open the volume randomly and whichever word

prophets), a Fa/-i maqbul (well-liked auguries), and a section on

they saw first identified the augury. More complex systems

interpreting bodily twitching (ikhtilaj). The illustrated chapter on

required a series of steps, which consisted of consulting tables

prophetic omens (Fal-i anbiya), in particular, anticipates the role of

to calculate the augury by turning a specific number of pages

both Abrahamic and Islamic prophets as the principal agents of

and counting a set number of lines and words."

prognostication in the later pictorial Fa/nomos. Here, each omen is

Some fa/nomos were physically independent from the Koran.

associated with a religious figure, who is represented by an

The earlierst surving copies date to the latter part of the

architectural structure. In turn, the buildings, which probably refer

fifteenth century, but several include introductions claiming that

to an astrological mansion or house (bayt), relate to specific

they are based on earlier copies, which were used by prominent

aspects of human existence. These are both auspicious and

historical figures, such as the caliph Harun a I-Rashid (reigned

inauspicious in meaning and recall the content of prognosticati ons

786-809) and Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (reigned 998-1030).

in the later pictorial Falnamas (fig.1.3).>• By presenting Abrahamic

They were often attributed to the prophet Daniel, Imam Ali, and, most frequently, to Imam Ja'far al- Sadiq, the sixth imam, who

and Islamic prophets within an astrological context, the Fa/-i anbiya

is assoc iated, rather spuriously, with texts on magic, alchemy,

integrates augury of the stars and augury of prophets and thus

and divination titled Jafr.12 The link to a prominent religious or

offers religious justification for astrology and the art of di vination.lS The Divan of the poet Hafiz, also known as the "tongue o f the

secular figure lent these autonomous fa/nama manuscripts legitimacy and prestige, which was unnecessary when they were incorporated within a volume of the Koran. The earliest Fa/nomo-i Jafar appears in the Kitab al-bulhan

·

unseen" (lisan al-ghayb), was the most popular literary work for prognostication.16 Like the Koran, the Divan could be consu lted in several ways after the seeker had recited a series of prescribed

(Book of wonderment) by Abu Ma'shar ai-Balkhi (died 886), the

blessings and invocations. The text was then opened to a random

celebrated astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, and

page; either the first lines on which the person's eyes fell or t h e

philosophern A copy of this text was illustrated between 1334

last ghaza/11 on the page constituted the augury. A series o f table s

and 1435 (734-839 AH) during the reign of Sultan Ahmad Jalayir

with letters, always in multiples of seven or nine that were a lso

Fig.1.2, Koran folios, Iran, 1560S-1570s, CBL MS.1S48. ff.2Sla-2S2b (cat. 7)

The Art of Sibli omancy

. 21

referred to as a (a/nama, provided an alternative m a n n e r to identify

edited version, t o Sultan Mehmed 111 (reigned 1595-1603), the

a n augury. Hafiz's Divan also could be consulted by more than

Raznama comprises a wide range of anecdotes on the art of

one seeker at a given time. Group bibliomancy had its own

prognostication with a variety of texts among the Istanbul elite.

particular rules and regulations. For instance, assigning a poem to

The protagonists included historical personalities and celebrities

a participatent depended on the order in which the individuals

who were the author's contemporaries and were fluent i n Arabic

were seated, and once it was read in the name of one person, it

and Persian and familiar with the Koran. As described by Kashifi,

could not be repeated as a prognostication for someone else.

at regular gatherings these learned members of Istanbul society

This method also implies that there were witnesses (shahid) for

consulted the works of Haf1z, Jami, Rumi, and, of course, the Koran

each omen, a term that also refers to the first or seventh verse,

to seek guidance. Reportedly, their randomly selected verses

considered the summation of t h e augury's meaning." Thus

clarified, i n a n almost miraculous manner, their queries and

the manner of consulting Hafiz's Divan could be a private,

dilemmas.20 Even the powerful Istanbul grand mufti Ebussuud

personal, and by extension, silent experience or a more public,

Efendi (died 1574) engaged in divination, but he also tried to codify

communal, and audible one, transforming it into a theatrical and

the meaning of the prognostications and thus control the degree

performative act. The art of bibliomancy must have been quite common in

of free interpretation. According to the Ottoman scholar and writer Haji Khalifa (1609-57), the grand mufti issued (atwas (legal

fourteenth-century Iran, for the celebrated satirist Ubayd Zakani

opinions and edicts) on the conditions of the legitimate act of

(died 1371), a contemporary of Hafiz, composed two works

prognostication.21

devoted to omens. His Fa/nomo-i buruj parodies the signs of the zodiac and the Fa/nomo-i wuhush va tuyur uses animals and birds as the subject of comical and often lewd prognostications.••

Bibliomancy and Images: The Genesis of the Falnama Genre

The Raznama (Book of secrets) by Husayn Kefevi (died 1601), an Ottoman scholar, judge (qadi), and man of letters, also attests to

At least by the first half of the sixteenth century in Iran,

the popularity of bibliomancy in sixteenth-century Turkey.

consulting large-scale images also became a popular means of

Dedicated to Sultan Murad 111 ( reigned 1574-95) and, in a slightly

prognostication, but the practice may have had a longer history.

Fig. 1.3. Abraham's Catapult, Kitob a/-bulhon, 14th and 15th century, Boot or 133. f.16 8a. Fig. 1.4. Jonah and the Whale, probably Iran, 1570S-1580s, TSM H.I]02, f.27b

An eleventh-century poetic simile in the Divan (Collected

Muhammad i b n Mahmud, known as ai-Qazvini (died 1283),

works) of the famous Persian panegyrist Manuchhri (died 1040)

another i m p ortant precursor was Muhammad ibn Mahmud

seems to imply the existence of possible earlier examples.

al-Tus i . Tusi's Ajo'ib, written in Persian in 1160 or 1170, describes

In an evocative celebration of nature, Manuchhri claims, "Like

the wonders of the world in ten chapters and i n c ludes discus­

divi ners, the birds in the trees/have spread i n front of them

sions on free will versus predestination, t a l i s m a n i c portraits,

manuals f u l l of images," a verse that anticipates seventeenth­

tombs of prophets and kings, dream i n terpretation (oneiro­

century eyewitness accounts of diviners using i l l ustrations

mancy), and alchemy-themes that implicitly o r explicitly shape

(folchi-yi musovvir)-" A painting such as Jonah and the Whole of

the content of the i l lustrated Fa/nomos." Tusi's emphasis on

circa 1400 i n the Metropolitan Museum of Art may represent

occult knowledge may explain the renewed interest i n illustrated

the type of work to w h i c h Manuchhri refers (fig. 1.5)-" Except

copies of his Ajo'ib of-mokhfuqot in the 1570s and 1580s at a

for a n inscription on the arms of the prophet, which states, " I n

time when i l lustrated Fa/nomos were also in vogue (fig. 1.6).

t h e d e a d of night, J o n a h (Yunus) entered t h e m o u t h of the fish,"

Just as Tusi's work recontextualizes a wide body of knowledge

the composition has no related text. The terse description of the

to underscore the m i raculous nature of God's creation, the

subject, coupled with the monumental size o f the composition,

i l l ustrated Fa/nomos appropriate a range of sources to offer

recalls later depictions of the same m i raculous scene i n the

insight i n t o the unknown and encourage moral, ethical, a n d

Fa/nomos (fig. 1-4) and may have served as a forerunner.

religious conduct."

Even i n the absence of clear literary or pictorial precursors, many of the ideas and themes found i n the pictorial Fa/nomos

The synthesis of knowl edge on astrology a n d magic to guide human behavior and actions-an idea that is implicit i n the l a t e r

can be traced to e a r l i e r i l lustrated texts, beginning with the

i l lustrated Fa/nomos-largely s h a p e d the c o n t e n t of an unusual

Ajo'ib ol-mokhluqot (Wonders of creation). Although t h e best­

thirteenth-century text, known as the Doqo'iq oi-Hoqo'iq

known author associated w i t h Ajo'ib literature is Zakariya ibn

(Aspects of the verities). A medieval i l l ustrated a n t h o logy, w i t h

Fig. 1.5. Jonah and the Whale, Iran, 14th century, MMA 1933.113

T h e A r l o f B1bllomancy 23

with both i l l ustrations and auguries (fig. 1.7) -" Arranged

( � ��.:;,7 .::--�/' � v: �)--:--: IiI/) .::5/cl_/1 � i, L?J L� . l .::.); I/� l.f

1

in twenty-nine chapters, each of which addresses an unusual poetic device, the text includes six paintings that represent some of the earliest Islamic zodiacal signs on paper. Like the

.:.:,.;/

later Fa/nomos, the prognostications cover a range of mundane concerns, such as trading, purchasing jewels o r animals, or a person's appearance and health.28 In the Munis a/-ahrar, however, the images are still secondary to the verbal prognos­ tications, a text/image relationship that is reversed in the i l l u strated sixteenth-century Fa/nomos. The concept of "wonders," first explored in t h e Aja'ib al­ makhluqat literature and recast as prophetic miracles in t h e Fa/nomos, a l s o p l a y s an important role in A b u Ma'shar's already mentioned Kitab al-bulhan, ill ustrated i n the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. I n addition to a chapter on demons and angels. w i t h talismans and numerical s p e l l s for controlling them,

•ililiiill u (

.:

the manuscript h a s a curious il lustrated section of a series of

"''�:1

"wonders" that inc ludes a portrait of the author and illustrations of churches, monasteries, mosques, baths, and mythical places .

�VJ'' .;:;;��'�/­ (...'' ;0� "�'('h":'�;,,_;;�u �' �ii(j,-_., ('·, ,)� !''-!"' ) �(jl i;./ '::Ij'/�I' �) .::-; / :.�;� 1-.'r+r'' t,,, �, J1(jl� C))(:.' ��1!.41..' ).' l � (j i '.., .:::,.J �f�t;J� . � }

1/1:)

'

'

Although the images are identified, they otherwise have no text and have been interpreted a s possible tools intended for storytelli ng29 In view of the text's preoccupation with different types of divinitary practices, however, it is tempting to argue

' I,J)J

4 r] , J,; ,J'd, ·�ilL' , �c);, � �d.>;. 1/�?d/,; ;;,;�:�

;//..,-----:,.,.;'.....:.- /);,;1

that these "wondrous" images also may have been used for prognostication (figs . 1.8, 1.9). Moreover, several of them are thematically identical to later pictorial auguries, lending further support to their proposed role as divination tools.30

I

-:I;) � ;�/.-',/{;"·� .� r):;_;;':, .

sections on astrology, the occult, and Tusi's Aja'ib al-makh/uqat. the manuscript is dedicated to Ghiyas al-Oin Kay-Khusrow 1 1 1 (reigned 1266-84), the l a s t ruler of the Anatolian Saljuq dynasty. I t was compiled i n the cities of Aksaray and Kayseri in central Anatolia i n circa 1272-73, with later additions by a certain Nasir al-Oin Muhammad, a geomancer (a/-rammal) i n charge of adjusting the hours (al-sa'ati) and producing talismans (a/-haykali). The Daqa'iq a/-Haqa'iq probably was created in response to the Mongol menace that threatened the political stability of Anatolia in the latter part of the t h i r teenth century. Although it was not intended for divination, as a compilation of themes relating to the occult at a time of political uncertainties, t h e Daqa'iq ai-Haqa'iq bears a certain parallel to the illustrated Falnamas of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, created in the wake of a new Islamic millennium . '•

The now-dispersed Persian poetic anthology Munis al-ahrar fi daqa'iq a/-ash'ar (The free man's companion to the subtleties of poems) by Muhammad i b n Badr al-Oin Jajarmi was completed in 1341 and probably represents the earliest extant manuscript

24 ·Essay 1

Fig. 1.6.

Demon, Ajo'ib ol-mokhluqot, Iran,

1570s, TSM H 401.

f.ssa.

Fig. I.]. Folio from

the Mun1s ol·ahror,

Iran. 1341, FGA F1946.14

(cat. 11)

-

A rare example of an Ottoman illustrated text, reserved exclusively for prognostication, is the fragmentary and damaged Ottoman Hur�idname (Book of the sun) in the National Library of Ankara (A. 5179)." Datable to the sixteenth century, the versified Turkish text uses the letters of the word hur�id (sun) to reach the prognostication. The method of prognostication is loosely based on the type of tables developed for the Koran and Hafiz's Divan and is described in considerable detail in a later and unillustrated eighteenth-century copy of the same text. I t instructs the seeker t o begin by casting a series of lots on a table with the letters of the word hur�id. These direct him first to a planet, t h e n to a bird, followed by an animal, and finally to an Abrahamic or Islamic prophet (among them, Muhammad, the four caliphs, Hasan, and Husayn), who will reveal the augury." Although damaged and repainted, the illustrations of the Ankara Hur�idname include schematic images of a l l the birds, animals, and prophets mentioned in the text. Several of the prophets, who have all been defaced, are shown with their attributes, such as the cane of Moses, the fish of Jonah, or the book of Daniel (fig. 1.10). Instead of the more traditional flaming nimbus associated with prophets, they are shown with a round halo, suggest ing a possible Christian iconographic source. Like the paintings of the Munis al-ahrar, however, these illustrations are secondary to the written prognostications. Only with the sixteenth -century pictorial Falnamas are images fully transformed into auguries and "read"

to give insight into the world of the unknown. •

Fig. 1.8. Gog and Magog, Kitab al·bufhon, 1 4th and 15th century, BODL or 133, f.38a. Fig. 1.9. Magic Mountain, Kitob al·bulhan, 14th and 15th century, BODL or 133, f

�V', d!Y.• v,·F>J.b

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(... 1�;.:./ J.:',

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;r,.:.;�,\.�{J'j;.,_,;JI.•

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of the earliest surviving Greek fragments associated with the

from the seventh century onward also can be encountered (in

name Petosiris or simply ascribed to the "ancient Egyptians."'

identical or similar versions) among other civilizations over a great

The translation and adaptation of Babylonian omen literature

chronological and geographic expanse. Yet piecing together a

(astrological and other) into Greek and Sanskrit helped spread it

narrative that offers a coherent and uninterrupted history of each

from western Europe to China, and it was consulted from antiquity

individual method, and tracing its development and transmission to

through the Middle Ages and to the modern period. Versions

different languages and cultures, is an impossible task. Only part of

are known in a variety of languages used from Gibraltar to Inner

this history is visible to us today because our knowledge depends

Asia and its Pacific shore, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac,

on the surviving wntten record, itself fragmentary and determmed

Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Chinese.•

by accidents of preservation. An additional difficulty is generated by the fact that the study of divination pertaining to different time

Several other methods of prognostication beyond those based on celestial or other natural phenomena have visible roots in Ancient

periods, geographic spaces, and languages has been pursued

Near Eastern antiquity and a complicated and multidirectional

within the context of separate academic disciplines, each with its

transmission over languages, geographies, religions, and cultures.

own history, tools, methods, and interpretations. These disciplines

Ancient Near Eastern literature includes texts pertaining to the

are mostly text-based and philologically driven, and they take

occurrence and interpretation of omens derived from observing

into consideration approaches and methods developed by social

other aspects of the natural and supernatural world beyond the

anthropology (a non-text-based discipline) to varying degrees.

heavens and, sometimes, even from inferring non-observable

It is perhaps not by chance that some of the earliest surviving writings in any language pertain to divination and were produced

phenomena. For example, one may draw prognostications from the outward appearance and chance behavior of human beings and

in royal courts. Such is the case with the inscribed oracle bones,

animals, insects, lizards, and birds; from occurrences in fields,

datable to the second millennium BCE, that preserve the earliest

gardens, rivers, and marshes; and from the appearance of fire and

significant corpus of Chinese writing.' The earliest evidence of

strange lights. Physiognomic omens are closely related to medical

divination practices that plausibly correlate to equivalent practices

diagnostic ones, while the future also can be predicted through the

in the Islamic period can be found in the Ancient Near East, where

interpretation of dreams (fig. 7.1).' Most divinatory practices

surviving writings on celestial omens in Akkadian also date from

attested in cuneiform tablets can be found (in their broad outline,

the second millennium

and occasionally even in concretely matched detail) in Greek and

BCE.

It is, however, reasonable to postulate

the existence of even older such writings in Sumerian at least

Roman antiquity as well as the Christian (Greek and Latin) and

as early as the end of the third millennium BCE.2 Ancient Near

Muslim Middle Ages and into the early modern period. Many also

Eastern literature on celestial omens included predictions based

are mentioned in the Old Testament• and are discussed by Jewish

on observations of the changing appearance and movement of the

learned figures writing in Hebrew or other languages from antiquity

celestial bodies (sun, moon, planets) as well as meteorological

into the early modern period. A few examples are discussed below.

phenomena (thunder, lightning, rain, rainbows, earthquakes). From the end of the second millennium BCE until the Achaemenid period (sixth-fourth century acE), Mesopotamian royal courts

Dream Interpretation

considered celestial omens the principal means through which the gods signaled their intentions to the kings. This led to a

Evidence of dream interpretation survives from the Old Babylonian

systematic observation of the heavens, recognition of the

period (the city of Susa in the second half of the second millennium

periodic nature of celestial phenomena, and the development of

BCE),9 while cuneiform tablets from the library of Nineveh (seventh

mathematical models to predict their recurrence-practices that

century BCE) yield a very fragmentary Assyrian text on prognosti­

eventually produced what we now call mathematical astronomy

cation from dreams.10 The Assyrian text vaguely resembles aspects

and horoscopic ast•ology' This knowledge quickly traveled

of the earliest surviving Greek text on dream interpretation, written

beyond Mesopotamia, as is evidenced by a demotic Egyptian

by Artemidoros of Daldis in the second century CE. Artemidoros

papyrus. Though copied around the end of the second or begin­

based his treatise on extensive fieldwork that he personally con­

ning of the third century CE, it preserves a text that, at least in part.

ducted throughout the Roman Empire (Italy and urban centers in the

was composed in the late sixth or early fifth century BCE and

eastern provinces are explicitly mentioned) as well as works by

represents an Egyptian adaptation of Babylonian astronomical

earlier authors, some of whom are said by Artemidoros to be from

observations pertinent to the organization of the calendar.• Near

Egypt and Syria (Tyre and Antioch). Graeco-Roman dream inter­

Eastern celestial omen literature was translated and adapted into

pretation clearly informs the earliest surviving Jewish treatment on

Greek as early as the middle of the second century BCE, the date

the subject, the tractate Berakot in the Babylonian Talmud, written

222 ·Essay 7

Fig. J.l. People of the Cave. Fa/nama. probably Iran. 1570s. TSM H 1702, f l2b

down roughly between the fifth and the eighth century CE on the

are analogous to those attributed to ai-Jahiz , 2 3 while both the

basis of earlier oral tradition. Dream interpretation was practiced

Byzantine and the Islamic traditions agree that a raven ind icates

among the Arabs before the rise of Islam and is the only pagan Arab

death or separation'' In addition, correspondences in Graeco­

div inatory practice sanctioned in the Koran (chapter 12, "Sur at

Roman, Byzantine, and Arabic ornithomantic beliefs also exist, such

Yusuf") . 1 1 At least two eighth-century caliphs, Yazid 11 and Abd ai­

as the consensus that an owl is a bad omen.» These analogies can

Malik, are said in later sources t o have consulted Jewish dream

be explained in more than one way. Undoubtedly, the Graeco­

int erpreters, while Caliph ai-Mahdi (reigned 775-85) is said to have

Roman, Byzantine. and Near Eastern (whether pre-Islamic or

ordered Abu lshaq Ibrahim ibn Abd Allah ai-Kirmani to compile a

Islamic) traditions of occult science and divination influenced each

dream book, perhaps because he was able to interpret accurately a

other from antiquity into the Middle Ages and the modern period

cali phal dream by referring to the Koran, implicitly demonstrating

through either the transmission, translation, and adaptation of texts

that its content is required knowledge for the successful practice of

or oral communication of the type described by Galen. Furthermore,

this divi natory method and in this way making dream interpretation

divinatory beliefs associated with birds depended on observing

specifically Islamic." The earliest surviving Arabic treatise on dream

their behavior in real life and. as a result. may have independently

i nterpretation was written by Ibn Qutayba in the ninth century,

led to the same deductions. A negative significance for the raven

around the same time that Artemidoros's treatise was translated

and the owl is understandable because the raven frequents ruins,

into Arabic. Conversely, a tenth-century Greek text on dream inter­

while the owl is a night bird and therefore, like all things nocturnal,

pretation, subsequently translated into Latin and other European

is associated with the negative influence of the planet Saturn, a

languages, is demonstrably a translation/adaptation of Arabic

notion equally familiar to Graeco-Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic

Islamic material.13 Until the early modern and modern periods,

astrology. These shared notions made possible the translation and

ancient and medieval texts on dream interpretation continued to

oral transmission of divinatory lore from one language and cultural

inform prognostication through dreams as well as medical practice,

context to the other.

including the work of Sigmund Freud. This is evident from the multiple printed editions, translations, and adaptations of ancient and medieval literature on dream interpretation, which remains a

Scapulimancy

living tradition in Greece and the Middle East 1 4 Scapulimancy (Arabic:

ilm al-katif) is the technique of read ing the

future from observing a sheep's shoulder blade after it has been

Ornithomancy

cooked and scraped of its flesh. The existing textual evidence

This method of divination draws interpretat ions for the future from

of scapuli mancy, such as it survives in Arabic, Latin, Greek, Russian,

observations of the birds that appear in the sky, their cries, flight,

Sanskrit, and Mongolian, has been su rveyed by Charles Burnett'•

conveys contradictory information. The medieval written tradition

and other behavior. It was attested in the Ancient Near East" and

It neither appears to have been an Ancient Near Eastern practice27

referred to in the earliest surviving sample of Greek literature (the

nor is it mentioned in the ancient Greek sources. This is somewhat

Homeric epics, eighth century

BCE). Among t h e Romans, watching

the behavior of birds, both those found in nature and others kept

surprising, given that animal sacrifice and the reading of entrails for divi natory purposes were widely practiced in the Ancient Near East

for the purpose. was one of the most important methods of state

and the Graeco-Roman world; one therefore would have expected

augury.16 Arabs of the pre-Islamic period also were known for

the bones of a sacrificed animal to have played a similar role. The

this practice, though the evidence is limited to passing references

earliest known scapu l i m antic manual is in Arabic, attributed to the

in several Greek sources of the second century CE and later, such

ninth-century p h i l osopher ai-Kindi, and claims to be based on a

as Galen (who describes witnessing an ornithomantic contest

sheet or plan found in Athens and written in Greek 28 Its earliest

between a Greek from Asia and an Arab)." Appian, Philostratos,

mention extant in Greek is in the short text, attributed (accurately

Porphyry, and others-'8 Though systematic treatises on the topic

or falsely) t o Michael Psellos, that also discusses ornithomancy.29

definitely were written in both Latin and Greek, none is known to

Contrary to the Athenian provenance claimed by the Arabic text

survive today"; however, ample references to it can be found in

attributed to ai-Kindi, Psellos calls scapulimancy "barbarous"

Byzantine sources of almost every century.10 As for ornithomancy

(meaning "foreign"). Indeed, the only known scapulimantic treatise

in the Islamic period, details on its practice can be collected from a

in Greek survives in a thi rteenth-century manuscript, where it is

wide variety of texts." At least one short treatise on predictions

said t o be a technique of "Turkish and barbarous" origin.3 0 The

drawn from observing the raven is quoted in the fourteenth-century

existing written evidence for Western scapulimancy is informed by

encyclopedia Nihayat al-arab fi funun a/-adab (The aim of the

Arabic texts, and Burnett has discussed the transmission of Arabic

intelligent in the art of letters) by the Egyptian bu reaucrat and

treatises from Spain to Flanders. England, and beyond from the

intellectual Shihab ai-Din Ah'mad ibn Abd ai-Wahhab ai-Nu wayri

twelfth century onward, the period when most translations from

(1272-1333>. who attributes this text to ai-Jahiz, the famous ninth­

Arabic into Latin were made-" However, the tenth-century author

century scholar." The few examples of predictions based on obser­

ai-Mas'udi. a well -traveled intellectual and a reliable source for

vations of the raven quoted by the eleventh-century Byzantine

much historical and geographical informati on, reports that scapu­

polymath Michael Psel los (circa 1018-circa

224 Essay 7

1081) include some that

li mancy is a uni versal method of divination '' This suggests the

written evidence available to us, all of it relatively late, is only the

used to predict the future. The point of these methods is to allow

tip of an iceberg, the earlier layers of which are sunk much deeper

divine providence, in the form of chance, to intervene in order to

in time. It also begs the question of whether, when, and how often

help humans predict the future or reach a decision (e.g., how to

the oral transmission (or the practice of the same technique

divide war booty equitably). Modern discussions ol such methods

invented independently without direct transmission) preceded the

have attempted, through the use of appropriate terminology, to

textual transmission (or at least our ability to access textual

distinguish between them while also acknowledging their overlap.

transmission due to accidents of survival). Furthermore, it makes

For example, the term "kledonomancy" is applied to the inter­

clear that tracing the history of any given divinatory technique

pretation, for the purposes of divination, of a chance word or

with the help of textual evidence neither exhausts the topic nor

phrase (Greek: kledon) pronounced by somebody preoccupied with

resolves all problems: it says nothing about oral transmission and

something other than the affair about which divination is sought.

does not illuminate the social and political context within which a

The etymological interpretation of proper names is perhaps the

particular kind of divination was practiced.

simplest form of this kind of divination.•• "Cieromancy" is decision­ making or divination through the use of lots (in Latin sortilegium from sortes

Physiognomy and Divination

=

"lots"; in Arabic maysir or istiqsam, both of which are

pre-Islamic Arabic terms designating techniques condemned in the Koran; and qur'a, which may be used to designate generally any

Physiognomy (Arabic: firasa) is the technique of reading people's

kind of cleromantic procedure or specifically rhapsodomancy).•0

character (and sometimes even predicting their future actions)" on

Rhapsodomancy and bibliomancy both choose randomly and

the basis of physical appearance. The concept is known in Ancient

interpret excerpts from literary or religious texts (or even a pre­

Near Eastern omen literature, where it is linked with predictions

existing list of predictions) to divine the future or decide the course

drawn from the appearance of moles on various parts of the body

of future action. The texts and books chosen for this purpose

and from the personality and behavior of an individual, 34 as well as

generally are held to contain "truth" and include the epics of

things that may happen to the human body-sneezing, twitching,

Homer, Hesiod, and Virgil as well as the Psalter, New Testament,

etc.-in the course of its regular activities (i.e., palmomancy; Arabic:

Koran, the Sahih of ai-Bukhari, and the poetry of Jalal al-Oin ai-Rumi

ikhtilaj)'• An aspect of the contemplation of the link between body

and Hafiz. Examples o f collections with preexisting predictions are

and soul, physiognomy played a role in philosophical and medical

the Greek lots attributed to Astrampsychos, a Persian magus of the

discussions in Greek antiquity at least as early as the fifth century

fourth century BCE5'; and the Arabic collections (used in the exact

BCE

and into the Roman period'• It was a technique practiced in the

same manner as the lots of Astrampsychos) attributed to ai-Kindi

Latin Middle Ages, as is evident from, among other references, a

or to Caliph ai-Ma'mun." One may claim that rhapsodomancy

text compiled in Latin from Greek sources around the third or fourth

involves oral procurement of such an excerpt, while in bibliomancy

century CE and copied in fifteen manuscripts between the twelfth

identifying the excerpt requires the physical presence of a book.

and fifteenth centuries.37 In addition, Latin translations of Arabic

Of course, a clear distinction among the various practical

texts were drawn from originally Greek material'' Ancient Greek

applications of this general divinatory approach and an effort

physiognomic lore continued to circulate in Byzantium39 and was

to define exactly which method is meant by each term is more

eventually appropriated successfully into Islamic philosophical

a modern preoccupation than an ancient and medieval one.

and medical discourse.40 It was also amply referred to and further

Significantly, the terms used in modern European languages to

utilized in the early modern and modern period, sometimes for

designate these methods of divination are themselves modern and,

purposes that we consider very "modern," such as classifying the

though derived from the Greek language, do not occur as such in

insane and the criminal.41 Closely related to physiognomy are predictions drawn from

the ancient and medieval Greek sources•' In addition, a sharp distinction between the functions of orality and literacy is impos­

sneezing, twitching, and the appearance of moles on, as well

sible to draw for any society. The choice of a particular procedure

as chance movement of, various parts of the body, arranged in the

in a specific time, place, and social milieu was influenced by the

relevant treatises in various languages in head -to-toe sequence.

literacy of the persons involved and the availability of books as

These methods are also well known in the Ancient Near East,''

physical objects in their environment as well as the ways in which

Graeco-Roman antiquity," Byzantium!' the Latin Middle Ages, ..

a particular society was ideologically invested in their content.

and the Slavic46 and the Islamic worlds" and were further studied

To illustrate how different but contemporaneous societies used

and applied to "modern" ends in western Europe at the end of the

various cleromantic procedures based on the same logic and for

nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century."

similar purposes, it suffices to examine a few randomly chosen examples from the Byzantine and pre-Islamic/early Islamic worlds around the sixth and seventh century. The sixth-century Greek

Bibliomancy, Rhapsodomancy, Cleromancy, Kledonomancy

hagiographical text recounting the life of Saint Matrona from

A geographically and chronologically broad discussion of divination

day Turkey) informs u s that she decided to abandon her husband

requires the joint consideration of various procedures based on

and enter a monastery after praying and randomly opening the

the procurement of a chance oral or written statement that then is

Scripture, where she found a New Testament passage that she

Perge (a city on the southwestern Mediterranean coast of modern­

Islamic Divination· 225

interpreted as favorable to her intention to become a nun '' Less

of a book as a physical object, direct consultation of its content

than a century later, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (the one who

(and, therefore, literacy) is not necessarily required. For example,

lost Syria/Palestine and Egypt to the Arabs in the seventh century)

it is possible to predict the future by suspending a book from a key

is said by the n i nth-century chronicler Theophanes to have decided

and cord and deriving a "yes" or "no" answer to a posed question

where his army would spend the winter of the year 621-22 through

by observing how the book moves ''

bibliomancy (using the Gospels) '' This is not surprising in the context of the well -developed book culture of sixth- to seventh­ century Byzantium '' By comparison, in neighboring pre-Islamic

Geomancy

Arabia at a time very close to Saint Matrona's consultation of the

I I , I

! ' :I I.

11

II

j:

Geomancy" is an essentially cleromantic procedure (i.e., one

Ibn Hisham) relied on a cleromantic procedure that used arrows

in which random chance is meant to play a role) and may have

to decide who would be the appropriate recipient of the sacred

originated with the casting of pebbles, grains, or nuts and

finds he made in the course of clearing out the well of Zamzam ''

observing the patterns that they created on sand or other powdery

This is also consistent with the overall situation at a time and place

surfaces '' Several different geomantic procedures exist. In

where books and the concept of a canonical religious text did not

general, it can be said that geomancers arrive a t an understanding

exist in the same way as they did in Byzantium. This context

of the future (but also the present and the past) by having the

radically changes in the Islamic period, as is evident from a tenth­

seeker draw at random sixteen lines made u p of several points

century report quoted in a fourteenth-century source and per­

each. The points in each line are counted to find out whether they

taining to the reign of ai-Walid 11 (742-44). The caliph is said to

yield an odd or even number, which the geomancer then marks on

have used a volume of the Koran for bibliomantic purposes and to

a writing surface and thereby produces a set of four figures called

have torn out the page that delivered a bad omen, though he was

"mothers" that are used to derive another nine or ten figures,

unable to escape its realization a few days later•• This narrative

depending on the procedure." Thus the geomancer, with the help

reflects a society (whether of the eighth, tenth, or fourteenth

of the seeker, derives a total of fifteen or sixteen figures that either

century) that. unlike pre-Islamic Arabia, possessed a sacred text

are interpreted by themselves or are placed on a grid (or gee­

and an abundance of books (fig. 7.2).

i i

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Gospels, the Prophet's grandfather (at least according to the Sira of

. i\

1 11

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The interpretation of a chance pronouncement as a method of communication with the gods is known in ancient Mesopotamian

I

means, the most sophisticated of which is a mechanical instru­

texts from the late third millennium until the seventh century BCE,

ment that would not have been known to modern scholarship if a

where it is often linked with dream interpretation (evidently because

unique bronze example dated to the thirteenth century had not

such chance pronouncements may occur in dreams)?• This asso·

survived." Interpreting the geomantic figures can be a simple or

ciation of dream interpretation with the interpretation of chance

complex procedure, depending on how many factors the geo­

pronouncements is also evident in the Graeco-Roman and Islamic

mancer takes into consideration from among the following: the

worlds. A well-known example from antiquity is the fifth-century

intrinsic symbolic value of each figure, its position on the gee­

BCE narrative by Plato

mantic grid (if one is used), and its correspondence with notions

(Critias 44b), in which Socrates infers the

time of his death on the basis of a verse from the Iliad, recited to him by a white-clad woman in a dream." Quoting within a dream

familiar from astrology. Arabic texts present the legendary and semi-legendary origin

literary "classics" -i.e., considerably older works of literature,

of this art as Indian and Berber. with key figures in its development

such as Homer and the ancient tragedians, that were widely read

and transmission: Tum Tum ai-Hindi and Khalaf ai-Barbari the

and performed in the Roman period-is abundantly attested by

Elder, presumably a contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad who

Artemidoros as well as in Islamic dream interpretation, for which,

studied geomancy in India and passed it on to his student, Shaykh

of course, other texts are used, such as the Koran, the Hadith, and

Nasir al-Oin a i - Barbari the Younger.•• Another foremost master of

lines of poetry. (A case in point is the dream book written by Ibn

geomancy is Abu Abd-Allah Muhammad ibn Uthman ai-Zanati,

Qutayba, a well-known literary figure of the ninth century.)"

about whom nothing is known, but whose Berber identity is

Bibliomancy-literally defined as throwing a book open at random

evident from the epithet "ai-Zanati" and to whom is attributed

and interpreting the future on the basis of passages or letters that

several treatises in Arabic and other languages. Indeed, medieval

occur i n the selected pages-has to be linked to the increased use

geomantic texts are in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Greek, Latin, and

of the codex (as opposed to the earlier roll), the preferred book

various European vernaculars. Little researched are the geomantic

format in the world of Late Antiquity that can be chronologically,

texts in Hebrew. a language that played a role in the circulation of

if not also causally, associated with the rise of Christianity '' The

philosophical and scientific material in the Christian and Muslim

codex is supposed to have supplanted the roll, aided by the growing

Middle Ages and the early modern period.•• However, very little of

popularity of a religion of the book, namely, Christianity, in which

the manuscript or other evidence in any of these languages is

consultation and comparison of biblical passages is an important

earlier than the thirteenth century, which makes it very difficult to

religious activity. Compared to the roll, the codex is more portable

follow the development of this form of divination. It generally

and lends itself more easily to the bibliomantic procedure described

is assumed that geomancy was imported from the Arabs into the

above. Of course, when divining the future involves the presence

Latin- and Greek-speaking worlds. Indeed. the oldest geomantic

2 2 6 · Essay 7 I

mantic table). The random points on which the geomantic figures are based may be marked on sand or paper or obtained by other

�-� -. � -

F1g. 7.2. Folio from a Koran. Iran, 1598. FGA F19)2.65, f.70b

work in Latin is a tra n slation from Arabic by Hugo of Santalla, who was active

century. As for Greek, Byzantine manuscripts refer to geomancy

thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth. These texts

with several different names that reflect a n Arabic or Persian

acquainted Byzantine science with the astronomical, astrological,

origin: robolion or raboulion or ramp/ion, reflecting the Arabic word

medical, and cosmological think ing of Maragha and Tabriz under

rami (sand) that appears in the Arabic terms for geomancy, khatt

the Mongols and the legacy of Nasir ai-Din al-Tusi, the aut hor of at

al-raml or 'ilm a/-rami or darb al-raml; and tzatoubal, a transliteration

least two different texts relating to geomancy. 79 The continuous popularity of geomancy in Byzantium i s evidenced by the number

I

with these names that betray geomancy's foreign origins , we also

of geomantic treatises copied in Greek manuscripts of the thir­

find "scalpel of Pythagoras"" and spodomanteia, i.e., divination by

teenth to the fifteenth centu ry80 and its mention i n literary texts

I

means of spodos (ashes or dust), that seem to indicate, or at least

composed during the same period 81 The role of geomancy as a

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V I I I Paleologos) must have been part of the group of texts trans­

ferred from Persian into Greek during the second half of the

in Greek of the Persian and Arabic term jad wal (table). Side by side

I·

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as a translator during the first half of the twelfth

i 'II I I

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I I I;

I

to claim, an ancient Greek origin for this form of divination - " In

divinatory and political tool among the Ottomans, as well as the

one unique instance, in the tenth-century encyclopedic dictionary

ability of the Byzantines to understand its function, is indicated by

known a s Suda, among several titles of treatises on divination

the narrative of loannes Kana nos, an eyewitness to t h e siege of

attributed to Orpheus, we encounter the term amokopia [sic]. a

Constantinople by Sultan Murad 11. Kana nos describes events

word-for-word correspondence with the Arabic darb a/-rami -" The

surrounding the arrival of "Mersaites" (as the Hellenized form of

earliest datable geomantic text that survives in Greek was written

this Turkish name appears in Kananos), a son-in-law of Murad

by Nicholas of Otranto (active in the south of Italy, an important

who was a descendant of the Prophet and a revered diviner''

point of contact between Latin and Greek culture) some time

Mersaites came i n order to encourage a n otherwise unsuccessful

between 1175 and 1200, 7 3 about fifty years later than the earliest

siege and is said by Kana nos to have "read the books of Muham­

known Latin geomantic treatise. According to its introduction,

mad" (perhaps he recited the Koranic "Chapter of the Rum" that

Nicholas based his work on the Latin translation of an Arabic

promises the city of Constantinople to the Muslims) and to have

source as well as a number of Greek treatises in which the material

performed geomancy (to ramplia prattein). The continued interest

could be found scattered and disorganized. Therefore, Nicholas's

in geomancy attested in Greek sources of the early Ottoman

introduction suggests that before the beginning of the thirteenth

period suggests the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire

century there already existed in Greek several geomantic treatises

followed this trend as much as their Muslim neighbors and their

that circulated long enough for their manuscript tradition to have

contemporary Europeans did." Fittingly, late fifteenth- and

become confused.

sixteenth-century Greek geomantic manuscripts were copied to

The evidence emerging from the study of the geomantic tradition i n Latin and other European languages clearly indicates geomancy was extremely popular in western Europe from the

serve both the needs of Italian humanism and readers of Greek living in the Ottoman world '' Regarding the broader interest in prophecy and divination

twelfth until the seventeenth century, and its popularity rivaled

evident i n the early Ottoman period, indications suggest its pursuit

that of astrology." I n the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries,

at the court of Mehmed the Conqueror (1432-81) involved both

strong currents of skepticism and occultism were evident in Euro­

Muslim and Christian figures. Since the significance of prophecy

pean intellectual life, and occultists such as Paracelsus (1493-1541)

and divination for the elite and rank-and-file Muslims of the Otto­

and Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-1535) gained both fame and

man world is discussed elsewhere in this volume, we will limit

notoriety. A number of treatises specifically about geomancy were

ourselves to brief glimpses of the same phenomenon from a

published in Europe during the course of the sixteenth century

different point of view, namely, some Greek sources of the early

and met with considerable success, such as the one spuriously

Ottoman period. Julian Raby has demonstrated that the Greek

attributed to Agrippa that appeared in 1565"; or the work by

manuscripts surviving in the Topkap1 Palace are not the remains of

Christophe de Callan (first published in French in Paris in 1558,

the last Byzantine imperial library but a collection copied o r other­

reprinted three times until 1 577. with an English translation in

wise acquired for the court of Mehmed and his successors a t least

1591)"; and the less widely c i rculated French geomantic handbook

down to 1520, the date of the latest known Ottoman royal decree

by Banda roy (Paris, 1574) -" This means geomancy's importance in

({irman) issued in Greek to a European stale." Of the sixteen

the early Ottoman period should be considered within the context

manuscripts examined by Raby that were demonstrab ly produced

of its international renown'' as well a s a preexisting tradition

i n Mehmed's Greek scriptorium, at least five contain texts that

cultivated in the territories gradually conquered by the Ottomans

could be associated with prophecy, apocalypticism, and research

from the fourteenth century onward by both Muslims and non­

in the occult '' Additional Greek manuscripts covering such topics

Muslims. Of course, in their practice and treatises the non-Muslim

in the To pkap1 collection also can be pointed out '' A l l the pieces

geomancers had appropriated a tradition orig i n a lly i m ported from

of evidence have not been systematically investigated, and a n y

the Muslim world, evidently as part of

a larger transfer of Islamic

discussion on t h e topic needs t o take into consideration n o t only

astronomy, astrology, medicine (especially astrological medicine

documents in Greek but also the translations from Greek into

known as iatromathematics), and divination. For example, the

Arabic that were made at Mehmed's court 88 However, even at this

geomantic treatise translated from Persian in to Greek in 1266 by

preliminary stage it is possible to discern that, as part of affecting

E m p eror Michael

p olitic a l and ideological transformations i n the course of h i s reign,

the monk Arsenios for Lady Theodora (wife of

228 · Essay 7

Mehmed t h e Conqueror pulled together resources from all demo­

much as the endless shuffling and redealing of a deck of but three

graphic quarters and a l l intellectual traditions available in his newly

cards."97 The fundamental problem that acceptance of divination

expanded realm.

poses-not only for the three monotheistic religions but also for

There can be no doubt that the pictorial Fafnamas of the sixteenth century are the products of the specific social, political,

pagan phil osophical systems that assert man's moral freedomis that accepting the veracity of predictions about the future

and ideological conditions of the time and place i n which they were

implies acceptance of predestination. which undermines the belief

created, as demonstrated in the contributions of Kathryn Babayan.

that salvation is the result of moral choices made freely by the

Cornell H. Fleischer, Massumeh Farhad, and Serpil Bagc1 i n this

individual 98 Apologies for the divinatory arts may attempt to

volume. Such a method of divination-in which a picture i s chosen

reconcile divination with the assertion of man's moral freedom by

at random by throwing the book open and then interpreted on the

intimating that divination indicates not what is bound to happen

basis of what it represents-is not attested in the sister traditions

but only what may happen and, therefore, is used to decide on the

of pagan Graeco-Roman, Christian, and earlier Islamic divinatory

best course of action from among various possibilities or to better

practices.•• However, its constituent elements were not invented

understand what is already happening •• Within the vast topic of divination, a few more of its interrelated

out of nothing but are firmly rooted in broader principles and concepts found in existing methods of divination, such as biblio­

aspects should be briefly mentioned here, even if they cannot be

mancy, geomancy,•• astrology, and dream interpretation, and in

analyzed fully:

the sacred and secular narratives of Islam, while their pictorial representations are closely related to those found in a variety of illustrated manuscripts produced around the same period by artists sharing the same artistic traditions.91 In addition, though not all omens interpreted in the Fafnamas occur i n manuals on dream interpretation (the method of divination most evocative of

1.

The close link between divination and philosophy (because of what

it implies not only about morality but also about cosmology, the con­ sifience of the universe, and the interdependence of its constituent elements, whereby something that happens in one part of it necessarily influences occurrences elsewhere).

visual imagery), those that do, such as the interpretations of

2. Its status not as "superstition" but as a rational enterprise (because it

prophetic and sacred figures, paradise, hell, angels, etc., ultimately

is based on principles deduced from empirical observation, sometimes af

are inspired by the standing of these figures in the broader Muslim

the highest complexity, astrology being the most sophisticated such art).

tradition and are (unsurprisingly) consistent i n both methods of divination. 9 2 The pictorial Fafnamas were put together by incorpo­

J. As a result. its ranking as a learned product of high culture and its

rating ideas found i n the greater Islamic tradition of divination

cultivation at royal and aristocratic courts, where its potential as a

but were not l i mited to it. As pointed out by Kathryn Babayan, "In

political tool was recognized: it was utilized. therefore. to undermine

the Fa/nama, hearing the future as i t is being read aloud is another

one's political enemies and inspire confidence in one's followers or

aid to ensure the outcome of the image written out in the text."93

banned to avoid such politically expedient utilization.

The notion that the oral articulation of an omen will influence its realization, or that an omen will be fulfilled according to the interpretation articulated for it by a diviner, can be found in the Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and Islamic traditions of dream inter­ pretation over a long span of time •• Furthermore, the idea that before performing divination one should seek ritual purity and pronounce prayers ( i n the Fa/nama, one fatiha, three ikhfas. etc.) is not exclusive either t o the Fa/nama or to the Islamic tradition of divination. It is also shared by the divinatory traditions of Graeco­ Roman paganism and the other two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity•• Frequently, modern scholars studying magic and divination in the context of one of the three monotheistic religions (Judaism. Christianity, Islam) have emphasized a tension (perceived or real)

4. The exportabifity of its practice beyond the ivory towers of learned circles when stripped of its philosophical background and partly or completely relieved of its complex technical apparatus. For example, manuals of dream interpretation and geomancy promise their readers that the methods they explain can lead to the same results as astrology but without the bothersome burden of astronomical observations and their mathematical app/ica tion.100 Other manuals take the opposite approach, explaining things with such complexity that it is impossible to understand their content without guidance from a teacher; this manner of writing is meant to preserve the prestige of (and the practical necessity for) a "master" and hinder any "do-it-yourself" approaches 101 The study of divination offers an opportunity to contemplate

between the religious establishment and the divinatory and

one of the great questions i n history of any kind, that regarding

magical arts. Accordingly, the prayers and invocations for ritual

continuity and change, preservation and transformation. The

purity frequently found a t the beginning of explanations on how to

practice of various forms of divination can be properly understood

conduct magical or divinatory procedures have been interpreted

only within the concrete social, political, and intellectual context of

a s aiming to mask the practice's illicit character instead of a s a

the time and place where it occurs. At the same time, divination is

sincere a n d i ntegral part of the procedure. Such an interpretation

consciously rooted in traditions of deep antiqu ity, the ritual aspects

ultimately is generated by our modern desire to articulate defini­

of which tend to remain remarkably stable over several centuries,

tions for science, religion, and magic in various historical contexts

even in the face of significant ideological and societal change, while

by identi fying the limits and differences among the three.•• Yet. as

the practitioners of divination themselves sometimes call upon

ha s been r i ghtly observed, this situation "resembles nothing so

these traditions to enhance or defend the pedigree of their art.102 •

Islamic Divination ·

229

s

o ' i o oi·Dio T"''" ''''hooi, ' ooted phil"oph" ood my"''

who made his living as a Shafi'i qadi (judge),1 was summoned in 1426 to t h e court of the Timurid ruler Shahrukh (reigned 1405-47)

and Prophetic Tradition, Bistami was a Hanafi' by legal rite, a

at Herat to answer charges of unbelief (kufr) that ostensibly

member of the Syrian Bistamiyyah Sufi order, and an important

sprang from his preoccupation with cosmology, natural science,

cultivator and disseminator of "the science of lettersand divine

astronomy and astrology, divination, and the "science o f letters"

names" (ilm ol-huruf wa'l-asmo). A witness to Timur's sack of

(ilm al-huruf). In a pointed refutation of his accusers, aptly (and

Aleppo in 1400, Bistami traveled to Ca iro, where he established

angrily) titled "The First Tubercular Expectoration," having quoted

contact with the " R u m i " (Rumelian and Anatolian) scholarly

the Koranic injunction (12A9) against spreading suspicion and

circles that had for several decades jou rneyed to the Mamluk

inquiring too closely into the affairs o r beliefs of another Muslim,

capital for education a n d for t h e lively intellectual and spiritual lile

he wrote:

the city offered. I t was no doubt at the invitation ol his fellow

The second reason [to proh ibi t such speech] concerns the Imperial Dignity: for i f t hey

[Shohrukh] permit such

wo rds. then the science of

astron o my would become unbelief. Why then h as God based t ha t cosmic order

[ h ay ' at]

upon natural pnnciples such that the heavens

neither explode nor implode? Indeed, the contrary of [i.e., that astronomy is

co ntra ry

that

to re lig io n ] IS scnpturally

several places. And if astronomy should

allegation

stated in

be considered un bel ief. then

as trol ogy, too. wh i ch is based upon astronomy, would also become

u nbeli e f,

while at royal courts most discussion concerns the stars

especially at this time when the SCience h a s

orders given {or the establishment of on of observations] impossible for

I

I I

1i 1

II I ! '

ob s erva t ory [and compdnlion

to

achieve {o r centuries past.'

spent time with "the learned and virtuous of the Christians" and composed one of his earliest epistles.' Bistami taught h i s esoteric sciences, and explicated them in a growing number of treatises and ever larger volumes, to the elites of

what remained of the

Ottoman dominions and other principalities in Anatolia-including Shaykh Badr ai-D in, chief m i l itary judge to Bayezid's son, Prince Musa (died 1413), in Edirne, the ideological center of a major millenarian rebellion that threatened the restoration of an integral dynastic dominion by Mehmed 1 (reigned became

1413-21) 8 Bi stam i

a protege of Molla Fenari, another member of the

brethren (to judge from both Bistami's and Sa'in

ai-Din lurka's being the

affords an excellent starting point for an inquiry into t h e nature and

admiring references to h i m ) who is credited with

significance of divinatory science at the Ottoman (and not only

Ottoman shaykh ol-islom, the chief jurisconsult who would come

Ottoman) court i n the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He refers,

st a nd at the head of a specifically Ottoman s c ho l arly

of course, not only to that extraordinary cultivation of mathematical

career. Following a return to

Damascus and Cairo in in 1416,

first

lin eage an

the unsettl

Bistami r etu rne

years after the execution of Badr a i - D i n

IJ '

Ottoman Bursa, where he passed the remainder of his life w rit

of Ulugh Beg• and his observatory at Samarqand i n the mid-fifteenth

on the sciences-including those of letters, divination, med ici

'II I ,,

century but also to the fact that divinatory sciences, "revived" and

mysticism, and history-that were part of his (and his brethrE

rendered scientific, were thoroughly embedded in the political and

comprehensive intellectual project. Two years after Mehmed

:: I

I

courtly life of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries-an era that

conquest of Constantinople i n 1453, he ended the third

witnessed the end of the Timurids in Iran and Central Asia and t h e

Nazm ol-suluk fi musamarat al-muluk (Th e ordering of condu

Mamluk dominions in Egypt and Syria, a n d t h e establishment o f

the accompaniment of kings) a s follows:

regional dynastic powers, s u c h as t h e Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals.

:

and Uzbe ks .

, I

Sa'in ai-Din Turka (died

.I

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across the Islamic world, whose lives spanned the late fourteenth

I

to the mid- to late fifteenth century. While many were attached at

I

times to the most powerful courts of the day-Timurid, Mamluk,

I, h

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and Ottoman-they were more permanently attached to one another and the "new" learning they cultivated.

I

li

A younger member of this fraternity of letters who spent his

I

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F'ropilrl '01d: "The Deceiver [Dojjal, Muslim Antichrist]

··;nl·rn·"

Llllid pl'nple hove

,.J,I U1•

t .,.,1 Hn111 �>ill not

;,.,.

chap

·

i'·'' ' " ' , ··u1'" ''Cd

•, ., . ., ''''IJ'Ir·'cd ""

w

become indiffere n t to remembrance

commence un til

·· The

n dov 111

Constantinople a n

di v in e secrets

a n d radiant

1vluch t h e Ju dg m e n t

clue

will begin o r

1 Sho'ban 8 5 9 [ 1 6 July 1455]. 9

I n his own time and for at least two

cent u r i e s a f t e r h i s

Bistami was highly regarded a s a n a u t h o r i t y o n b o t h occu

life i n Mamluk and Ottoman dominions-he and Sa'in a i - D i n

�I

cosmology and the science of letters, w h i c h ,

I ike the K a b
� �Jr�Y. J�_z )

.

• •, ,

:>�JYY. �_;�1JJ.J��Ju�!J f• �If' � � I .­ ����:'b"'".)� �4J �..l�_; 2>YJ.;-1

_).) , ,

_ .

JJ.;�.)0�.)u)\�:;u_,s� ?l.tkbP�.)_r�:A;���!I

)

and both its adherents and detractors, were all keenly aware

Many of Bistami's works discuss extensively both Constantinople

of the eschatological and prophetic significance of the conquest

("lesser Rome," Rumiyya a/-sughra) and "greater" Rome (Rumiyya

of Constantinople, the Muslim conquest of "Rome" being one

al-kubra). They were circulated widely and were also kept and

of the feats to be accomplished by the Mahdi/messianic

consulted in the royal library in the Topkap1 palace. As we shall see,

conqueror in the ultimate phase of history (fig. 8.1) 10 The library

his authority in this regard became especially salient in the sixteenth

of Mehrned the Conqueror included an Arabic translation, from

century. For this reason, and for purposes of discerning some of the

the 5Y r i a c , of the biblical Book of Daniel, which comprised the dre a rn of

lineaments of the intellectual and spiritual background of forms of

Nebuchadnezzar."According to its inscription, it was

m ad e " fo r the treasury of the sultan . . . named for the prophet of th e e n d of time" by a Christian and included relevant passages

fro rn t h

e thirteenth-century Hebrew commentary of Ibn Ezra, to

th e eft e ct that the Fourth Monarchy would be that of Islam and its m o n arch

would be the "ruler of Rum" (malik a/-Rum), that is, of

Const a n t 1. co rn p l e

nople. Moreover, the endowment deed for his mosque

x i n the newly conquered cities invoked the looming

eschat 0 1 og1c •

al terrors of the hostile Blond Peoples (see below)

and o f G o g and Magog -''

Fig. 8.1. Ma h . . dr rn Front of Istanbul, TercOme·i mi(tah·r jifr

divination and apocalyptic prognostication that would become particularly Ottoman by the mid-sixteenth century-and so inform Ottoman understanding of the Fa/nama-an understanding of some of the central threads of Bistami's lifelong preoccupation with esoteric learning is useful. In his view, all forms of knowledge could be reconciled and deployed to account, at once, for the generalities of the cosmos as well as for the particularities of the past and future histories of religions and political communities. Once Bistami's reputation was established as an adept of letters (huruf), he increasingly turned his attention to history, the

aJ.jomi, Turkey, late 16t h century, TSM 8.393. ff.222b·223a

Ancient Wisdom and New Science · 233

II I

I

I,

i

I

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vested in the sixth imam, Ja'far ai-Sadiq (died 765),14 who

Apocalypse-which was also manifestly important to h i s pupil

,,

I

Shaykh Badr ai-Din-and to the genealogies of hermetic and

encoded it in a "comprehensive prognostication" (al-jafr al-jami),

gnostic wisdoms. These preoccupations are most encycloped ically

such that prophetic wisdom was preserved but occluded from the

displayed in his summa-ai-Fawa'ih al-miskiyya fi'/-fawatih

commonality of mankind until Ibn Arabi rediscovered it through

al-makkiyya (Perfumed fragrances on the Meccan openings)-

inspiration. He "reunited" mystical and philosophical wisdom in a

a clear reference to the "Meccan revelations" of Ibn Arabi13-

manner that was itself effectively prophetic, in that he inaugurated

and Nazm af-sufuk fi musamarat af-mufuk (The ordering of conduct

a new era of the expansion and concordance of natural, philo­

for the accompaniment of kings). Bistami describes the science

sophical, scriptural, and mystical knowledge, precisely what

of letters, which incorporates all ancient hermetic and prophetic

Bistami and his brethren pursued. The cycles of time, the clues

wisdom traditions (including Greek, Indian, Jewish, Christian,

afforded by history, and the nature of spiritual and temporal

Sabaean, and Muslim), as a rationally cultivable path to achieve

sovereignty became a s significant objects of analysis as the

the same knowledge of the divine and of the cosmos that was

movements of the heavens. Kingship and dominion were, after all,

attained by mystics through inspiration. Indeed, Bistami regularly

not only historical phenomena and philosophical categories but

refers to the "noble literalists (sadat a/-har(iyya) and noble

also were divinely revealed, as is exemplified by Solomon, the

Sufis (sadat al-su(iyya )" a s representing parallel and equivalent

embodiment of justice and prophetic kingship.

"professional" paths to illu mination. While insisting on his own

Two observations are i n order here before leaving Bistami

adherence to Sunnism and the righteous Hanafi rite, Bistami

during his lifetime. First, his devotion to huruf and their

traces the lineage of his prophetic science to Adam, whence it was

revelations must be distinguished from the radical Hurufism of

transmitted through a string of biblical prophets (particularly

Fazlallah of Astarabad, who was executed for heresy i n 1394.15

Daniel) ultimately to Imam A l i ibn Abu Talib, the "legatee of the

In most of the scant scholarly literature that deals with him,

Prophets" in the Islamic era, and thence to his first six successors;

Bistami is regularly designated a s "ai-Hurufi," a term that

it was subsequently preserved and practiced by a spiritual lineage

associates him with the new incarnationist religion preached by

of prominent gnostics. Knowledge of the future, in particular, was

Fazlallah and his successors; that religion seemed to make the

I

.I

II

I .

I

I, ,I II ' '

!j I

il

I iI'i I

I

, I

Fig. 8.2. Folio of lunar and Turko-Mongol

an

m I

1

.:!a1

Taqw m )! Mthmcd

1

Tur�cy

th POl u'l

M B

3 q fl 13b 4..1

founder not only a messiah, who brings a new prophetic

This large sense of history and its capacity to reveal individual

dispensation, but also an earthly manifestation of God. Bistami

and communal futures, as well as the centrality of prognosticative

studiously uses the terms harfiyya (literalists, lettrists) or ahl

science in Muslim and, of course, non-Muslim courtly life, i s

a/-harf (scholars of the letters) to refer to his own companions in

manifested most spectacularly i n t h e "calendars" (taqwim) and

technical learni ng.16 Moreover, he specifically denounces Fazlallah

annual astrological compendia (ahkam-i sal) that were compiled to

as an extremist, "a friend of Satan" who perverted a true form

give detailed guidance for the coming year, or perhaps for yet more

of knowledge for his own worldly ends in the same way that

specific occurrences and events. The earliest complete examples

ignorant and corrupt practitioners of Sufism are tempted to a n

date from the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror (1451-81) and were

antinomianism that i s merely a n excuse for moral license. I n

produced in the two years after his accession and before the

neither case i s t h e validity o f the path t o divine knowledge

conquest of Constantinople.20 While they display considerable

challenged b y the excesses of the unworthy." While it i s true

indebtedness to Timurid models, which were available i n the

that specifically Hurufi communities appear to have remained

Ottoman l ibrary, and to the Zij of Ulugh Beg, these calendars are

active and proselytizing i n Iran and i n Ottoman domains through­

remarkable for their "Ottomanness," a reflection of both the

out the first half of the fifteenth century, it i s also true that devo­

self-confidence and predilections of Mehmed the Conqueror.

tion t o "letters" was hardly the sole result of heretical preaching.

They are written in Turkish, in contrast to the long string of such

Especially through the activity of Bistami, i t became a deeply

prognostications prepared for Mehmed's successor, Bayezid 11

embedded part of the mystical, philosophical, and political

(reigned 1481-1512), which are all in Persian and are perhaps

environment of even the most self-consciously Sunni environ­

self-consciously Timurid in form to the point of maintaining Samar­

ments of the period. Indeed, Bistami and his brethren tried to

qand as the center of observation. The Conqueror's calendars are

naturalize esotericism i n the interest of creating a just order, which

also significant in that they include, at their very beginning, a

they saw as, ideally, Islamic in its role in the life of the Muslim

reverse chronology ("it is so many years since . . . ") of the signal

community and i n strengthening the dominion of revealed holy

events i n dynastic history, beginning with the emergence (khuruj)

law. In the Nazm al-suluk, for example, he meditates on the

of the founder and eponym Osman Beg (reigned circa 1301-

plethora of calendrical systems, non-Islamic as w e l l as Islamic;

circa 1324).21 Though not unprecedented, the chronologies

on the meaning of the organization of time in century units (qam)

represent the earliest fully extant internal sources of Ottoman

and on the differences between how people perceive the century

history, and their placement in these volumes confirms the

at its beginning versus at its end; and i n the period of the

Ottoman historian Halil lnalcik's statement that they serve an

successive identification of the Renewers of Religion, the mujaddids,

expanded renditions: Human history, and prophetic history from

who were sent by God, according to Prophetic Tradition, at the

Adam, leads to the (prophetic) emergence of the Ottoman House

Muhammadan dispensation, on the caliphate, imamate, and

head of each century t o "renew your religion for you."' 8 Secondly, Bistami's oeuvre, and the environment to which it

astrological purpose .» Their point is clear, particularly i n their

in what was widely considered the era that would witness the culmination of history i n the penultimate (ninth) century of the

affords a w indow, displays tendencies that might seem discordant

Muslim millennium, the last day of the World Week n According to

with a normative Sunni "orthodoxy" but which emerge clearly

Bistami, all of the great prophetic traditions agreed that the age of

i n prophetic texts and in the divinatory iconography of such

the world was to be seven days, with each day lasting a thousand

works a s the Falnama 19 The most salient of these ideas include:

years. The calendars of Mehmed the Conqueror are further

preoccupation with apocalyptic and messianic themes and

remarkable for their deli berately scientific deployment of

images; Abrahamic prophets and pre-Islamic history a s author­

mathematical, astronomical, calendrical, and even medical

itative sources of guidance, particularly through appropriate

traditions of knowledge i n the interest of both comprehensivenes�

application of either mystical, lettrist, or astrological techniques;

and accuracy. The most obvious example of this part of the project

reverence for the figure of Ali and his descendants a s possessors

is the concern to correlate a l l historical calendar systems, lunar a s

of comprehensive gnostic knowledge of past and future history

well as vernal a n d including t h e Turco-Mongol twelve-animal cycle,

transmitted, though increasingly restricted in its possession and

with the cycles of Middle (240 years) and Great (960 years)

circulat ion, from Adam and the time of Creation; and particular

Conjunctions (qiran) of Jupiter and Saturn, which were believed to

reverence for Jesus and for Christian, as well as Jewish, wisdom

be of singular significance for the rise and fall of religions and

traditions. To this admittedly summary list. of course, should

political communities (fig. 8.2). These concerns are most fully and

be added the affective and revelatory power of letters, and of the

ambitiously displayed i n a full-life horoscope of Mehmed composed

images formed from them even when, as i s the case i n the

well after the conquest of 1453. This admittedly omits the first third

Fa/nama, the signs of the astrologers or those of Bistami have been

of his life, which is not dealt with because that had passed.24 Fully

perhaps of Sufism after Ibn Arabi, is its comprehensiveness. These

with questions of method, such as, "Is a nativity to be calculated

sciences-for such they were to Bistami and his contemporaries­

from conception or birth?" The final portion gives detailed annual

transformed into figural representations. The point of lettrism, as

three-quarters of its 264 folios are taken up, i n Persian and Arabic,

preserved access to the cosmic order underlying successive and

predictions up to the year 886

interrelated revelations. Properly deciphered, the beginnings of

on the optimistic note that the sultan would live to the age of

h i story, and its cycles of prophets, point to its ends.

seventy-five, but he in fact died in 1481 at the age of forty-nine.

AH

(1480-81). The manuscript ends

Ancient Wisdom and New Science 235

Despite the ultimate failure of calculation in this particular instance. these documents. which were composed and often

I

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I.

q

\

Ii

�

\ II l

i

·

Occult practices associated with the science of letters and names. as well as more overtly scientific ones like astrology,

signed by the appointed court astrologers (munaJiim) and

remained a fundamental part of palace life and of policy

chronographers (sa'oti)-these are listed in the Topkap1 palace pay

decisions. and so. perhaps. were subject to greater control for

registers at least from the 1520s-are invaluable and largely

reasons of security as well as of reliability and authority. In the

unexploited sources for Ottoman history -" They are critical not

1520s. the aged maker of talismans to the royal family, whose

only for the history of science but also for ideological, cultural.

work included producing amulets that could be as elaborate as

and even political history, for they are an integral part of their

entire garments (cat. 4) i n the form of letters and divine names in

environment (in this case the Ottoman palace) and echo its

particular configurations, petitioned the sultan for Arabic

concerns and social and political imaginings. as will be i l lustrated

dictionaries and a n assistant calligrapher. because the volume of

in greater detail below. In the case of Mehmed. for example. he is

work was such that he could barely keep pace with orders. The

accorded in his own lifetime the status of both caliph and sahib·

function of these. he said. would be to free him from asking

qiran. the World Conqueror and Master of the Conjunction (i.e ..

others for the spelling or meaning of Arabic words, which might

that of Jupiter and Saturn)." Furthermore, a survey of these texts

allow the unauthorized to divine. based upon his queries, royal

from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries revea l s the integration

plans that should be kept secret.ll Astrology, derived from

of prognostication with policy. as they address immediate con·

astronomy. remained an honored scientific method and a bulwark

cerns and plans. the structure and relationships of social orders.

of occult sciences (fig. 8A). For a significant time. however, the

and even issues of likely succession. They also display. in their

politically driven court of Sultan Suleyman came to rely on more

progression. something of the development of a distinctive

hermetic and confidential forms of authority for guidance to past

Ottoman imperial identity.

and. especially. future events ."

One of the known calendars composed for Selim 1 (reigned 1512-20),27 for example. was presented at Nowruz (New Year) on 10 March 1513 (fig. 8.3). The prognostication implies both the

Prognostication and Prophecy

troubled accession of a sultan who had only just dispatched his

at the Court of Siileyman the Magnificent

fraternal rivals, and the unsettled state of his power. which Selim sought to secure the next year by marching against the Safavid

prophecy. political violence. and the redefinition of religious and

below Mount Ararat i n 1514. While the calendar follows the

social boundaries in Italy between 1494 and 1530. Ottavia Niccoli,

Persian model of those of Selim's father Bayezid. it notably takes

an historian of the Italian Renaissance, concerns herself with

Istanbul (Constantinople) as the basis of astral observation and

ll

so designates the still-new (and recently earthquake-ruined) dynastic capital as a cosmic center in its own right. The last Nowruz calendar for the reign of Selim, prepared by the astrologer Hoca Kemal for the year 1519

I'•I

I

(925 AH). is written in simple

Turkish '• The stars foretell a campaign to the west (Batu). Saturn

' i

rules against Latin Christendom (Firengistan. land of the Franks), and the sultan will attack both the pope of Rome (rimpap) and the Knights of Rhodes (Rodos). When Selim died the following year, these projects were left to h i s son a n d successor. Suleyman the

I

'l

In a fine study of the intimate relationship among apocalyptic

shah lsma'il, whom he would defeat at the plain of Chaldiran

Lawgiver (reigned 1520-66). To judge from two extant exemplars dated 1527 and 1531,29 the calendars of Suleyman were written unabashedly in Turkish, in a shift consonant with the Lawgiver's launching of Ottoman Turkish as the imperial la nguage of his

a

c

the t'\/!(IOflliiiOrv d1ssemmation of prop he ti tensions among vast :• �� -., , �tllh ,111ll culturolly v ried m1lieus m ltaly during the guerre 1 1 · • · �t·IJdt· / � > • t i l tne 1/Jtnsion of Charles VIII to that of Charles v.

.: J.,

i :;· ,

• '•;.• !

(,.,. �ltJill/lumf ond suggest at lea st a partial interpretation

i r ··n nn.·non nh1cil cfearlv appears to

. however, is at least partially new:

· � , .. u,·,,d.·.-,0 u1lfwr' rilat hod profound ties to the politicaf and r.

ft ,

l '''l l'· "'l···uh P{ /hc pNIO d was disseminated ve ry broadly through .\' / • " ' ' ' ' '·' , honn cls. In otih"r words, it was a differe n t aspect

· r ,. . J .- : . I

.'J· · i,r ·J ·,:I - '.1 , : /, r' '

We may usefully note that. while the same phenomenon was an equally embedded part of the central Islamic environment

soon-to-be u n iversal domin ion . The dates of these latter prognosticative documents are

during the same periods. it has, in contrast to the western

intriguing. for they mark a period in which prediction and prophecy

European case. received little attention, either in its own right

were at a height of currency (and professionalization) in a court fully

as a common feature of medieval or early modern life in the

preoccupied with internal rebellions. administrative reorga nization.

Islamic world or as a theme that in fact connects the larger

and repeated campaigns against Christian powers to the west. As

transformations experienced by both eastern and western sectors

the series of presentation copies seems to stop in

1531. at least in

terms of Topkap1 Palace library holdings. we see nothing in the

of the Mediterranean between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the middle of the sixteenth century." Yet the prophetic prism

sixteenth century'• like the sequence of annual royal calendars that

is important for an understanding of Islamic (as well a s western

were preserved from the time of Bayezid. The influential corps of

Christian) early modernity, particularly in reference to the

astrologers. however, stayed a palace pay unit, and its members

ioundation and consolidation. between 1520 and roughly 1550, of

clearly received a salary through the sixteenth century.

the "classical" Ottoman reg1me identified with the reign of Sultan

236 · Essay 8

-.. '

'

Suleyman, known as the Magnificent in western European parlance and a s the Lawgiver i n Ottoman historiography. Here I seek to trace the shadowy history of the convergence, and amplification, of apocalyptic excitement and prophetic text

despite his long-term proximity to the sultan remains ignored, probably purposefully, by almost all Ottoman narrative and biographical sources: Rem mal Haydar35 Haydar's story i l l u m i nates the specific environment from which the Fa/nama emerged and

around t h e figure of the young sultan and h i s early trials and

further casts suggestive, if not explanatory, light o n one of the

successes, and to give a sense of the palpable influence that

enduring mysteries of Ottoman history, namely, Suleyman's abrupt

prophecy enjoyed as both explanation and motive for the political

and secretive dispatch in 1536 of his grand vizier and alter ego,

action with which i t was thoroughly intertwined. I n the context of

Ibrahim Pasha, whose demise marks something of a (successful)

Suleyman's strenuous rivalry with Habsburg (Charles v ) and

terminus in the sultan's struggle to place his dynasty's legitimacy,

Safavid (Shah lsma'il, Shah Ta hmasb) opponents, ambient

and his own divine mandate to exercise singular and universal

prophetic texts increasingly centered on the possibility that the

authority, beyond challenge '•

millennia! empire was at hand (both within and between Latin

Soon after the accession in 1520 of the sole surviving, and hence

Christian and Ottoman M u s l i m ambits), and their valence reached

politically untried, son of Selim the Grim, whose rapid and

a crescendo in the mid-1530s, the years of heavy diplomatic

extraordinary conquests-the defeat of his Safavid nemesis Shah

traffic between Vienna, Paris, and Istanbul; of Charles v's capture

lsma'il at Chaldiran i n 1514, and the conquests of eastern Anatolia,

of Tunis; of the Ottoman siege of Corfu; and of the militarily

Syria, and especially Egypt i n 1516-17-had astonished and terrified

successful but politically traumatic Ottoman Campaign of the Two

the Christian and Islamic worlds a l i ke, the ancient books of

lraqs against the Safavids (1533-35). A central thread in this effort

prophecy began to appear. The Gurbetntime (Tale of exile) is an

to produce a history of prophecy in this crucially formative

account of the captivity in the Christian realm, between 1483

period is the tenebrous biography of a major political actor and

and his death in 1495, of Cem Sultan, the brother of Bayezid

formulator of apocalyptic prophecy at the court of Suleyman, who

(reigned 1481-1512).37 While the work has much i n common with

Fig. 8.3. Double folio, Taqwim of Bayezid, Turkey, 1513, TSM E.H.1710, ff.6b-7a

11

Ancient W1sdom and N e w Science ·

237

the better-known Vcikt'cit-t Sultan Cem (Story of Cem Sultan)

of a crusade against h i s brother, Bayezid 11. " Such a work might

completed in 1514,18 it seems likely to have been written by a

well serve as an aid in preparation for disputation on the merits of

member of t h e prince's retinue in the early 1520s.•• The author

successive, and cognate, revelations.

interpolates a long account of Cem Sultan's reception i n Rome by

the Istanbul context of 1526-three years after Sultan SUieyman's

fanciful and have therefore also dismissed the historical value of

elevation of his favorite, Ibrahim Pasha, first to the governor­

the Gurbetncime . Invited to recount his own story and the history of

generalship of Rumeli and then to the grand vizierate, in violation

h i s house, Cem does so "according to the Chronicles of the House

of expectations among the vizierate that seniority would be

of Osman." The author maintains:

observed-though it still contains significant reference to the body of European prophecy all uded to above. especially as it posits

However. the late [prince] had acquired from a Vcncltan scholar a book of h t s tory; there it was written that after the year 920 [1514] one

named Sultan SU/eyman. of the House of Osmon. would b ec om e would attack Hungary and. after many battles a n d conquests. would a t te mpt several ttmes. without success. to

mount se a - campat gns

[agamst Rome]. Th e re after he would create a {/crt that none could

resist. and whe re ver he intended conquest he •.vould be

vtC to ri ov s.

This

[to take the throne]. one who hod never had high office would be mode

kill countless of its commanders and learned. tncludll)g the pope a{ the

firs I v izier and beylerbeyi of G ree ce [Rumeli] and would be named

IS. S ulton

Suleyman-Siwh 1vodd , .. a,,,,.

[St.

Pet ers ] wmcr

·:

years before the y ea r 894 [1489. the dale of Cem·s orrt•.ol rn R,Jrnel

nul "'

[t.e.

Ihe

assault the Christians and wage three great

the th11d at tempt he

wo u ld take

the Roman Empire and all its

nohte capt(llns and would be victorious; it would be a great victory, by

assembled papa l reltnue] scenwd t o have [th;.;;-1;�oJjl �10:�.)���Y.����)�):>

ill ustration. Although the paintings were never executed, the spaces left for them contain instructions for their subject matter, which inc luded images of particular phases of Bistami's text with scenes from recent dynastic history. One such instruction, for instance, reads, "Here is the place for Sultan SOieyman and Ibrahim Pasha," while another ind icates that the last conqueror of Egypt is to be represented by an enthroned Selim.75 Murad

111

was famously

preoccupied with dreams and their interpretation, as well as with other occult prognosticative practices. Indeed, he collected more than one hundred of his own dreams into a volume, and he reportedly foresaw his own death a week before the event in the form of a disturbing dream i n which he saw the palace and its gardens ruinously ravaged. Murad immediately requested an interpretation from his confidant Saat�i (timekeeper, astrologer) Hasan Pasha-who was having disturbing dreams of his own that the bureaucrat and historian Mustafa Ali interpreted ominously for h i m.'6 Ali, who self-consciously designated himself Celalzade's heir as dynastic historian, cites as one of the sources for his four­ volume universal history in Ottoman Turkish-the last of which is devoted to the Ottoman House-the versified history of Mevlana I sa, which, composed i n several recensions from 1529 to 1543, places front and center the eschatological accumulation of identi­ ties (Renewer of the tenth century, sahib-qiran ruling the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn i n Pisces 960 years after the Prophet had last combined spiritual and temporal dominion in h i s single person, thirtieth qutb al-aqtab) t h a t make of SOieyman either the Mahdi or his world-conquering forerunner." As late as the 1590s. Ali addressed to Murad treatises that were meant to draw the ruler's attention both to his own plight (lack of worthy employ­ ment) and to that of an empire in danger of disintegration. He referred to apocalyptic predictions, such as those of Bistami, for the tenth Hijri centu ry, including one that claimed the culmination of history and ruination of the earth would begin i n 903

AH

(1497), and

that by 990 or 999 A H (1582 or 1590-91) no Arabs would be left o n earth.78 I n a n epistle o n numerology and prognosis, Mustafa Ali Umar, U t h m a n , Ali-and of a l l the Companions of the Messenger

of God." The resemblance of Ottoman messianism to that of the

Shi'ite, e x t remist Safavids was not lost on contemporaries, o r near

contem p o ra r ies, especially when the program of Ottoman sanctity was articu f a t e d by a n authority whose origins lay i n the heart of Safavid A z e r baijan. The Po p u l a rity of prophecy and overt reference to the apoca-

1 r :P ICsu(and

h ermetic) foundations of Ottoman sovereignty may

b s i d e d in the broader p u b l i c sphere after the death in 1566

a ve

of S u " ie yrn a n , the sahib-qiran-Haydar stated t h e sultan would live at least . u n t i l the year 990 AH and possibly until the year 1000 ( 9:2 ) -neither prognostication nor its sources disappeared. R r th e y were absorbed into the fabric of private life at the ' O tt o n n an P a lace and into the new imperial culture of which 5 u. 1 eym a n h ad been the architect. In its central image of the Ot to man d ynasty as saintly and eschatological, one that would rule th I al-iarn;e N orfd at the end of historical time, Bistami's Mi(tah a/-jafr C o ns tituted the primary authority and chronicle. In the

���

nnidd 1574_1e Of th e reign of SOieyman's grandson Murad 95)·

F'i&. 8

b

111

(reigned

a royal edition of the Arabic original was prepared for

- E. . �-1 S.t ng Sun in the West,

TercUme·1 mt{lah·t Jtfr ai-Jaml, Turkey, late 16th century, TSM

suggests that if the work should meet the ruler's aoproval, access to the palace library and its rich holdings i n this arena would enable him to write yet fuller works on the subject.79 Bistami's Mi(tah al-jafr al-jami remained a palace project and a private family history. Gazanfer Aga (died 1603), the chief white eunuch, commissioned a summary and adapted translation of the

work in Ottoman Turkish ( Terciime- i mi(tah-i jifr al-jami) that was completed in the first years of the reign of Meh med

111

(reigned

1595-1603). The two copies of this work produced in the royal ateliers contain lavishly i l l ustrated apocalyptic events, such as the advents of the famous Beast of the earth and of Dajjal (the Antichrist), and also include identifiable persons and geographies, such as Selim, Constantinople, Rome, and Egypt (fig. 8.6) .80 Inco rporating many of the themes and structures that informed Bistami's project, as well a s traces of the deeply intertwined but ever more distinct histories of the emergence of Ottoman Sunnism and Safavid Shi'ism, the Fa/nama then became a private, and secure, means-together with the more public annual astrological calendars-for discerning the lineaments of the present and futures of the Ottoman sultan and his family. •

B 393. f 246b

AnCient W1sdom and New Sc1ence 243

D

"' ' "'

·

289

I I, I

'I

51b

52•

�

(Folio 51b]

[Folio 52b-Moses and Qarun]

(We sa•d·] �o Adam! Dwell thou and thy w1fe 1n the Garden[. and eat of the

Qarun was doubtless of the people of Moses[; but he acted insolently towards

bount•ful th•ngs there•n as (where and when) ye w1ll; but approach not this tree,

them· such were the treasures we had bestowed on him, that the�r very keys

or ye run 1nto harm and transgress•on"] (Koran 2:35>.

I

would have been a burden to a body of strong men. Behold, his people said to him:

�

"Exult not. for God loveth not those who e11ult (in riches) ] (Koran 28:76)

On the day when water and sorl were mrxed

I:

Be couttou� about pnde and greed,

The mark of grte/ was made on Ihe p1ece of clay of Adam

b h t

Humans were not free of any grref.

Because ot of hem mult1ply JCOiousy

After th1s ftrsl blow was sinden on Adam

Nothmg will come from these two except corrupt ton. Do not make your heart bound to these two

xpelled from Paradise)

lncrc.•osc tn makmg 91(ts and bemg humble

(Folio sza-Adam and Eve E

0 augury user • Know and be aware that

And 11 may be that God grants you success

the pure Adam, peace be upon h1m,

and Havva (Eve] have appeared as your augury They left parad•se because of the misfortune caused by the dev1l, curse be upon h1m The serpent was the doorkeeper

II

[Folio 53a]

of paradise, and the devil seduced h1m away from the r•ght path, and the serpent

0 augury user' Know and be aware that Qarun [Korah]. curse be upon

smuggled the dev1l 1nto parad1se by h1ding h1m 1n 1ts mouth The 1mpure dev1l

appeared as your augury Qarun was the nephew of the prophet Musa [Moses}. peace

seduced Havva away from the nght path and [convmced her) to eat the corn of

be upon h1m In the beginncng, he was p1ous and read the Torah. (Afterward]. because

wheal. One way or another, Havva gave the corn of wheat to Adam There came the

he collected many riches, he became greedy and did not g1ve required alms (zokot), he

him, has

decree from him whose ex1stence IS necessary to Jabrail that he should expel Adam,

became an mf1del. The exalted God, may h1s grandeur be great, says (in the Koran],

Havva, the serpent, the peaco k, and the devil-all f1ve of them-from parad1se and

"Venly, Qarun was from the people of Musa" (Koran 28"]6). This Qarun was the son of

c

'

52b

53•

send them into the world After Adam came 1nto the world, he was weep1ng and

Saf•n. and Saf1n was the son of Qah1n, and Qah1n was the son of lazi, and lazi was the

wailing for three hundred years at the top of the mountam of Sarand1b [Ceylon],

son of Yaqub [Jacob). peace be upon h1m When Qarun became wealthy, he separated

and h1s cry, "Our lord treated us unjustly'" reached the glonous throne [of God]

from h1s relat•ves, became haughty because of the r�ches. showed d•sobedience to

Only because of the reverence to the f1ve wearrng the Bedoum cloak-whose light

Musa, peace be upon h1m, and became an 1nhdel to God, may he be honored and

fat•ma, Hasan, and Husayn-and out of

God saw and who are Muhammad, Al1,

respect for the1r intercession was Adam's repentance accepted Now,

glonf1ed He collected so much wealth that the exalted God ment1ons his treasures 10

0 augury user,

1! you proceed toward your 1ntent10n, 11 Wilt be a little diffiCult, but the conclusion w1ll be eas1er than d•ff1cult-on cond1110n that you do not turn your head away from

m so many treasures� (Koran 28:]6). In the end, he defamed

the Koran: MWe gave h•

Musa, but the e11alted God entrusted the earth to Musa's command. Musa prayed so that thcs cursed (Qarun] collapsed mto the ground w1th h1s wealth and effects. Now,

obedience to h1m whose ex1stence IS necessary, that you make room 1n your heart for

0 augury user, turn away from

love for the family of the Prophet, that you act courageously 1n th1s •nlention, and that

repent hom ev1l compan1onsh•p. and do not search for worldly [goods], so that the

you do not behave hke a hypocnte Even •f you suffer some d1ff•culty [1n the

dev1l, curse be upon h1m, does not seduce you away from the right path It was the

beg1nnmgJ. the end Will be auspiCious If you have Intended to llavel, go, because 11

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the mtention you have made, abandon evil deeds,

cursed dev1l who seduced (some] sons of thE' prophets away from the r�ght path;

extremely good On the tourney, your c rcumstan es will reach the highest success

{be cautious] that he does not seduce you, too. You must be a lr�end to your relat1ves

you w1ll rece1ve the greatest prof1t from a grandee who has dcgn1ty. rank, and an army.

and not be host1le. You should not undertake •llegal travels w1th the a 1m of acq01nng

and your fr1ends Will greatly bE'nef1t from you. If you have 1nqucred about marnage

worldly goods; the exception IS travel to [the shnnes of] the 1nnocent 1mams, peace

and a relationship, do 11, because 11 IS extremely auspiCIOUS If you have •nqucred

be upon them. If you have mqu�red about mamage and a relationship, do not do 11,

about someth•ng lost or a runaway, search for •1. because •n the end you w1ll f1nd 1 1

because 11 IS not good If you have cnquired about somebody who 1s 111, the only way

I f you have 1nqu1red about someone absent o r •II. the absent person w1ll return

for her/h•m to be cured 1S for you g•ve alms to the poor on friday and Monday eve.

late but in peace. and the s•ck person w1ll be cured shorlly However, you must not

If you have 1nqu1red about somethcng lost, stolen, or a runaway, do not search,

neglect your prayers so that you attam your deslfe, •I the e11alted God w1shes

because 1t w1ll not come back If you have 1nqu1red about someone absent. s/he IS preoccup1ed w•th an occupation and w•l! not 1eturn (soon]. but s/he IS completely at

I ,,

peace The suffenng that was 1n your way has gone for good

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290 · Append111 A 2

53b

54 • [Folio 53b-Harvt and Marut]

[Folio 54b-Tomb of Imam Husayn)

(They followed what the evil ones gave out (falsely) agamst the power of Solomon:

Those that have faith and do good works . . . (Koran 2:277, 10:9, 11:23, 18:30)

the blasphemers were not Solomon, but the ev1l ones. teaching men mag•c.] and such things as came down at Babylon to the angels Harut and Marut[. But neither of these taught anyone (such things) without saying: "We are only for trial; so do not blaspheme." They learned from them the means to sow discord between man and wife. But they could not thus harm anyone except by God's permission. And they learned what harmed them, not what profited them, and they knew that the buyers of (magic) would have no share in the happiness of the hereafter. And vile was the price for which they did sell their souls. i f they but knew!] (Koran 2:102). My HaruHike magic in the well of tmagmotion Surpassed the magiC of Babylon m sorcery

The Prophet many t1mes mode thts p1thy remark, Wh1ch he smd about the digmty of the martyr of Karbala· "The person who prayed at Korba fa, What concern should s/he have about the f�re of hell?'"

[Folio 55a]

0 augury user! Know and be aware that the tomb of the oppressed, innocent Imam Husayn b. Ali b. Abi Tali b. blessing and salutation be upon him, has appeared as your augury. He is the leader of absolute justice and importance. great and superior, splendid and grateful; beloved for his counseling, his purity and simplicity,

Modest virgins of my imoginallonYou would ask whether they ore the water of ltfe from !heir freshness

appearance and manifestati o n, authenticity and kindness, his arguments, his glory and bravery, for his role as deputy. the maker and the selected, the pivot, the servant of God, faithful and true, for bemg the stranger and the martyr. Now, do not turn

[Folio 54•]

away from your intention. because very soon your objective and goal will be

0 augury user! Know and be aware that Harut and Marut have appeared as your augury.

attamed. It is established and ascertamed that everyone who steps inside this

They were two angels, and the exalted God, may his grandeur be great, granted to them

blessed threshold in the search of any desire from a friend or foe, his desire is

the kingdom of the earth so that they would spread law. Howe�o�er, in the end they

attained, and nobody has left the threshold disillusioned. Now that the blessed tomb

rebelled, drank wine because of a woman, and when they became drunk. they burned

of that d1stingwshed lord has appeared as your augury, act courageously in this

the words of God and murdered a child. They chose the torment of this world. because

intention and curse Yazid and his people so that your desire soon comes true, and

this world will come to an end wh1le the other world will not. Therefore, the exalted God

the lantern of your fortune lights up. Immense benefits will come to you from a high­

tortures them by hanging them upside down in a well at the mountain of Babylon, and

ranking lord, so much so that a group of people will envy you. It also appears that

everyone who comes to them learns something from them, such as sorcery. Abd-Allah

some o f your relatives are your enemies, and they wish to displace you from your

[b.] Abbas says, "The augury user should turn away from the intention he has made,

business. However, keep your heart strong, because you will subdue all your

and if not, he will suffer much hardship. He should [also] be careful about women,

enemies and gain victory over them. If you intend to travel, you must wait for twenty

es;pecially a short woman with a ruddy complexion, so that he does not get into trouble

days and proceed thereafter, so that your ci rcumstances reach their pinnacle. If you

because of the wiles of the woman. Most of the prophets and favontes of God suffered

have inquired about marriage and a relationship, do it. because it is auspicious.

d i fficulties because of women's avarice, and it was because of women's avarice that

Abd-Allah [b.] Abbas says that i f you have made this inquiry about someone who is

hypocrites and malicious people murdered the favorites o f God." Therefore, you must be cautious about the plots of women, abandon evil actions, and do not fail to pray and

peace be upon him, so that the sick person

fast. so that your circumstances reach fulfillment, and tranquility and repose embrace you, and you are freed from disaster. The augury seeker must certainly keep with him

the names of God and especially the legend of the seal of prophecy of his majesty the refuge of heraldry, may God bless and salute you the armlet of the commander of the Talib, may salutations be upon

ill. you must give sweets to the poor as the offering to the oppressed Imam Husayn, IS

cured. I f you have inquired about

something lost or run away, it will soon return to you. If you have inquired about someone absent, s/he will come back in a while, but s/he is in peace. You must not neglect your prayers so that you achieve your desire.

h1m his family. You also must keep with

faithful and the leader of the pious, Ali ibn Abi

him, so that you are protected from the wickedness of

the enemies and from the sorcery of the malicious people. If you have inquired about traveling. do not go, and if you go, everything that you receive will be wasted If you have inquired about nuptials and marriage, do not do it, because 1t is inauspicious. If you have inquired about buying and selling, or about something lost. run away, or stolen, do not do the former and do not search for the latter, because it is 1ll·fated. lf you have inquired abo�t someone absent. s/he is distressed and tired of searching for someth1ng; s/he is not hkely to return [soon]. If you have inquired about someone ill, take the sick person to the bathhouse On Friday eve, read the invocatio against sorcery over n the water, and pour water on her/his head so that that person cured, if is the exalted God wishes.

The Topkapt Falnama (H.l]02)

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291

s6a

55b

57•

s6b

(Folio SSb-Paradise]

[Folio s6b-Hell]

Gardens watered by runmng streams . . . (Koran 2:25, ):15, 3:136, 3:195, ):198).

To it (hell] are seven gates: for each of those gates is a [special] class (of sinners]

If you need a sovere1gn m the capitol of parod1se.

asstgned (Koran 15:44).

After !he Prophet. be the sfavl' of the 1mpetuous Iron {All)

Those people who become aware of the divine secret,

He 1s the sun of the zodtoco/ stgn of prorecttofl and the leader of the reJig1ous.

Know that they have found a way to escape th1s deadly place.

Asststont of God the soul of the Prophet. commander of the fo,fh{ul

Search for your deSire from drssatisfacllon because Those who went th1s way hove found what you wrsh

(folio s6a] 0 augury user! Know and be aware that paradrse h;;�s appeared as your augury.

II •

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[Folio 57a]

Paradrse is the place for the pure, and for those who are servants, fnends. and

0 augury user! Know and be aware that hell has appeared as your augury. This is the

slaves of the king of the heroes and the Lron of God-All, the favonte of God.

place of hypocrites, infidels, the vicious, the afflictive, vtllains, the non-praying,

Now, 0 augury user, act courageously with your mtenlion, because the essence of

adulterers, and non-behevers. It is established and ascertained that this augury tS

your desire has come to you, your desire is attained, your lantern has been lit from

e"tremely [bad]. and caution must be patd to your intention. You must be careful

the invtsible world, the phoeniK of fortune has descended onto your head. and the

about bad company. must repent from evil deeds, must perform the vow that you

star of your ascendant has moved away from dtsadvantage Your dewe and goal in

have made in your heart. and must refrain from the forbidden. so that affliction and

this world and tn the invtsible world wdl be attained. Beware. a hundred thousand

difficulty pass away from you safely and for good. lf you step out toward this

times beware, that you do not turn away from your intention, because you wtll

intention, you will suffer endless difficulties. By no means, do not return to the

certatnly receive immense benefits from a grandee of h1gh dignity and rank, so that a

.ntention you have made, do not neglect prayers, and every Friday eve send one

group of people will envy you You must not be a hypocrite and must act

hundred and one blessings to the lord of being and the essence of e"istence,

courageously and faithfully in thts intention; you must hold on to the members of the

the tntercessor at the Day of Judgment, the facade of the doorway of purity, the full

family of the Chosen [Muhammad), may God bless h1m, and the Approved {Ali).

moon over the foundation of fidelity, the advocate at the day of retribution. the

peace be upon him, so that your des1re is ach1eved very soon. If you intend to travel,

noble Abu 1-Qasim Muhammad, the messenger of God, may God bless and salute

go toward the east because much prof1t wtll come to you If you have tnquired about

him and his family, so that harm, troubles, and dilf•culties leave you. A hundred

cultivation and agriculture, do •t. because tl ts good II you have tnqutred about

thousand limes beware and be cautious about evil company, because every cruelty

something lost, run away, or stolen, within seven days you will certamly rece1ve

that you suffer and everything that leaves you-all of it ts because of evil company.

news about it or it wtll return to you. If you have tnqutred about someone absent,

You must keep company with a devout and ptous person who loves t h e people of the

shortly the absent person will return with immense wealth and endless

famtly of the Chosen [Muhammad] and the Approved [Ali], so that evil and

contentment. If you have inquired about hav1ng duldren. tn a short t1me the eKalted

hardshtp leave you If you have intention to travel. do not go, because it is extremely

God, may his grandeur be great, will grant you with a male child who w1 JI become

bad. and (If you go) you will suffer endless anguish and will waste what you have.

knowledgeable. and most people of the world will need hts knowledge However, the

If you have tnqutred about marriage and a relattonshtp, do not do it; if about

augury user must not neglect prayers, must always have rttual punty, must bamsh

someone who •s absent [and] traveling, s/he is unlikely to return [soon). Do not

doubts away from the heart, and must always curse the enemies of the fam•ly of the

search for anythtng lost, runaway, or stolen, because you will not ftnd it. I f you have

ktng of holiness and the chief of g01dance. Alt b. Abt Taltb, peace be upon htm, so

tnquired about somebody ill, s/he is unlikely to get well, unless you give alms and

that the desire is obtatned, in this world and tn the inv1s1ble world, if the God wishes

offering to the family of the Prophet so that the exalted God provtdes the cure. If you have tnquired about cultivation and agriculture, do not do it, because you will regret tl Abandon this tnlentton! God knows best

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292 · Appendix A.2

[Folio 57b-lsh ab Killed Trying to Destroy the Ka'ba]

(folio 58b-lmam Hasan Raises the Daughter of the King of Yemen]

Seest thou n o t how thy Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant? (Koran

[There was. for Sheba, aforetime, a sign in their homeland-two gardens to the

105:1).

right and to the left. "Eat of the sustenance (provided) by your lord,] and be grateful

0 broth er! For how long more w11/ you follow passtan and affectton ?

to him: a territory fair [and happy, and a lord oft -forgiving!"] (Koran 34:15).

The time has come that you turn your face toward the throne of God

After {prOISiflg] the kmg pra1se the master of the assembly.

Cosh money of your life has been wasted for this tronsttory world

[Then) say a word about the v1rtues of the grace of Hasan

0 Mus/1m' How much more will you be gomg the wrong way?

Say 11 to the wmd of the early spnng, to the source of water,

[Folio sSa]

Soy 1t m Egypt and Syna, m lnd1a. Chtna. and Khutan

and to the meadow.'

0 augury user! Know and be aware that the people of the elephant [Koran, sura 105]

have appeared as your augury. Those cursed, headed by the damned Abraha, came in order to destroy the edifice of Ka'ba. which is the temple of God. The exalted God, may his grandeur be great and h i s bounty universal, sent upon them flocks of btrds, and they arrived, with a stone in the beak o f each bird, over the heads of

Do not fear anyone, say these words smcerely "0 mamfestat/On of wonders ' Help us, A/1 1 I pray to you so that my gne{ and sadness go for away from me "

[Folio 59•1

those cursed, and each bird threw the stone on the head of someone from the

0 augury user! Know and be aware that the light o f the eyes of the Chosen

cursed so that, by the decree of God, by these stones they killed every one o f them

[Muhammad], the joy of the heart of the Approved [Ali], the peace of the soul of the

and their elephant. Now, 0 augury user, you must turn away fro m the intent1on you

brilliant Fatima, the pearl in the throne of God, and the steadfast leader Imam Hasan b.

have made and must not proceed toward it, so that your business reaches the

Ali, peace be upon him, has come up as your augury. During his reign, the king of

apogee, misfortune leaves your fortune. and tranquility turns to you. If you proceed

Yemen unjustly killed his own daughter and the son of his minister. Then he regretted

with this intention, any peace you have had will very soon be wasted, and you will

the killing of the two, descended into mourning, and there was no one who could cure

not achieve your desire. Therefore, it is best that you abandon this intention, do not

that pain. In the end, the minister said, "Now is time for the accession of Hasan b. Ali,

neglect prayers and fasting, and do not knock at the door of anyone's house

peace be upon the two o f them. We must send someone to search for the imam, so

searching for it, because your desire will not be attained. It also appears that your

that he heals this pain." When the messenger went out of the gates of Yemen, he saw

business has a problem that you would lik e to eliminate. Make a vow that you will go

the innocent Imam Hasan b. Ali , peace be upon him, approaching, and the people of

on p ilgrimage to the [tomb] of one of the innocent imams, so that God, may he be

Yemen were delighted. The imam prayed, and with the prayer of His Majesty the two

blessed and exalted, takes the impediment away from your work, opens for you the

who had been killed were resurrected. 0 augury user, know that your dead

door to riches and wealth, and peace and repose embrace you. [But this will

circumstances have come alive; the one whose existence is necessary opened for you

happen] on the condition that, first of all, you repent your sins and do not go near

the door to fortune. happiness, and prosperity; and your lantern that had gone out has

the forbidden, so that your business reaches its apogee, and because of this you will

lit up. Within this time. you will certainly obtain profit from a high-ranking grandee,

b e able to go on pilgrimage to [the tombs] of the imams. If you have intention to

your desire from this world and from the invisible world has been attained, and your

travel that is legal, go, because you will achieve your desire. I f you have inquired

business has reached its apogee. You must strive courageously in your intention.

about marriage and a relationship, d o not d o it, because you will regret it. Abd-Allah

Abd·AIIah [b.] Abbas says, "If the augury user has intention for travel, travel in the

[b.] Abbas says, �Under this augury, if you have inquired about something lost,

direction of the qibla because your circumstances will soon reach their goal, and you

runaway, or stolen, that which was lost o r ran away will come back to you, but do

will certainly be in full tranquility in this travel." You will receive benefits from a noble

not search for the stolen because you will not find it." I f you have inquired about

monarch, so much so that a group of people will envy you. If yo u have inquired about

someone who is ill, you must give alms o n Monday eve and light a lantern a t a

marriage and a relationship, do it, because it is extremely auspicious. If you have

shrine, so that the sick person is cured. If you have inqUired about somebody absent,

inquired about something lost. runaway, or stolen, search for it, because it will certainly

s/he will not return soon, but [you will receive] news about her/him.

return to you. lf you have inquired about someone absent, you will certainly receive news about her/him or s/he herself/himself imminently or s/he will arrive with much riches. If you have inquired about someone who is ilL s/he will be cured very soon. However, the augury user must certainly keep with her/him the seal of prophecy and the armlet of the commander of the pious of the world, Ali b. Abi Talib, peace be upon him, to be protected from the wickedness of the enemies, if God wishes.

The Topkapo Falnama (H.1702)

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293

[Folio 59b-lmam Mahdi Enthroned] And we raised him to a lofty station (Koran 19:57).

0 heart' The [moment of) appearance of the Mahdl the master of tht- 11me. has come The penod of JUS tree has come. and the star of th•s world [has "sen} If some people ore m despou from the scvet�ty of enem1es But now the epoch of so{ety and secunty has come l1sten to tJm prayer /hot has come through the st>ven heavens ··o mom{estotlon of wonders' Help us. AI•' I pray to yOtl so that my gr�ef and sadness go {or away from m(' [Folio 6oa] 0 augury user' Know and be aware that the sign of the leader of the t1me, the sovereign of security, H1s MaJesty Imam Muhammad·Mahd1, the lord of the t1me.

has come up as your augury. Th1s augury IS extremely auspiciOUS, and felicity and blessed happmess have become your companions. The exalted God opened for you the door to v1ctory from the 1nvisible world. The boat of your hopes [was rescued

II .

from) the whirlpool of gnef and arrived at the coast of des1re. You will rece1ve benef1ts from a grandee who is a descendant of the Prophet, or from a theologian, or a judge Somebody who is absent [and) traveltng wtll return safely Your jOurney in the d irect ion of the qibla is auspicious. Young tree of your hope has brought frutts It a ppea rs that the augury seeker is bound by a des1re, but you must not let fear fmd its way to your mind, because your destre will be attatned very soon. However. you must not commumcate with anyone. because i f you tell your secret to anyone you w1ll suffer damage. If your 1nqutry 1S about nupt1als and marnage, (proceed). because prosperous chddren w1ll come from 11. If you have someone ill, very soon

the exalted and glonfted God w1ll grant cure. [as he says m the Koran (1]:82)]. "We send down in the Koran healmg and mercy for the bel1evers.R Form1ng a partnership and commerce will bnng abundant proht. However, do not be carel ess

about the plots of enem1es, especially the plots of women, and part1cularly of a dark, heavyset woman Do not stay wit hout {the amulet wtlh) the prayer against sorcery and w1thout the armlet of his maJesty Imam Muh ammad - Ma hd i, the gu1de and the

master of the 11me. so that you attatn your des1re, 1! the exalted God w1shes Once the mostt>r of th e ttme came up O$: your augtuy.

Earth and time wt/1 be up to rour wtsh No doubt. wherever you go.

You will fmd only proftt and w1/l no! suffer damage

Note These KoraniC translattons are found tn Abdullah Yusul Ah, The Holy Qur-an

Text, Translat1on and Commentary (Cambrtdge and New York Murray Prtnling Co and Ha fner P ubl1s h ing Co . 1946). Text 1n brackets was added to complete a KoraniC verse or to pro v1d e cla nty

294

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Append1� Al

Appendix A-3: The Fal n a ma of A h med 1 (TSM H .1703) Translated b y Sergei Tourkin

2b

3•

(Folio 3b-Preface]

Thts is the Book of Auguries of His Majesty the Padishah, Refuge of the World, and Shadow of God-may God perpetuate his regency and kingdom until the day of the last of days. Endless pratse and innumerable accolades to that king who exudes goodness and generosity and to that lord who grants hopes-exalted is he beyond comparison-who made auspicious human beauty the vanguard of existence and pride of being and who gave by means of him splendor and purity to the gallery of existing t h ings. As clear proof of the oneness of his incomparable essence, he increased wtth the pen of his omnipotence the beauty and magnificence of the tomes of night and day with the forms of bright stars. Your beauty JS the most gorgeous m the realm of mogmficence W1th your rays the world IS auspiCIOUS Beaut1(1er of the workshop of ex1stence, mformer of the condition of the nat1ons of Ad and Thamud 1 In meanmg the world 1s a book m wh1ch is wntten the condtt1ons of nat10ns [Folio 4a] Mornmg and mght ore 1ts leaves, m wh1ch ore dep1cted (ear artd hope. Toke on augury See what your deSift 1S. See the shape of your begmmng and end.

And gifts of prayers and perfumed greetings be to the leader of all beings, the epitome of all things who brought low and smashed the idols of infidelity and heathemsm in the temples of Yathnb and Satha, in accordance with the power of the noble meaning of the words "the hand of God is above their hands" [Koran 48:10] and brought to the path of Islamic law and faith those who denied the Right Religion. Pray for htm who

IS

the best of monlcmd. our lord. our Ahmed the Chosen

Pnde of apostles. leader of the Obv1ous Rel1g1on. leader of the caravan of legtslot1on and rel1g1on The dust of h1s threshold su(f1ces as

o

crown on the head

To set• h1m suf{1Cts as on auspiCIOUS omen L1ghtnmg costs light into the candle of h1s beauty No one can d1stmgUJsh his countenance (rom ltght An 1mage of the cond1t1on ofpast apostles

IS but a leaf m descnpt1on of his perfection

Our gool 1s to hove recourse to h1m

The Falnama of Ahmed 1 (H.170J)

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295

6a [Folio 4b) 0 Lord, I proy (or h1m ond send greetmgs

(Folio sb] who enjoys precedence in his power, honor, and grandeur by eliminating

And to h1s noble house, compomons and the mogrtJ(tcen! p1ous ones

oppression and cruelty w1th mighty pillars, splendor of Ottoman sultans by virtue of his

The rntention of giving precedence to thts eloquent 1ntroductton and of gathering and arranging these various p�etures and shapes is that when tn anc1ent times mank1nd first stepped into the expanse of the world and looked upon the sttuatton of the world as an example, mystics and ecstatics who fully understand and comprehend the external form of the world have conf1rmed that the h1story o f past nattons tS a manual for people and that 11 is appropnate to learn a lesson m any and every affair from those who have pteceded. It is espec1ally right lor mtghty rulers and exalted kings, who are the bases of order for k1ngdom and nat1on and causes for rules for the foundation of subjects and realm. to look upon the tales of prophets and saints and the adventures of past rulers, to contemplate theu beginmngs and ends. and to comprehend the !mal end of the•r own affairs from them. To that end they have filled pages with ind1cations and allus1ons to the physical shapes of events that happened to past rulers while they were seated upon their thrones of felicity (Folio sal so that, by means of augury from wh1chever of those pages IS opened, the seeker of the augury can apply to his own Situation whatever is wntten and depicted

I

II

of the history of the prophets and rulers on that page, make an analogy from those situations with h1s own des1re, and act accordmgly. If you wish power and glory to •ncrease for you, let your gaze always be upon past events Therefore, for h1m who presently occupies the throne of the k1ngdom of the Chosroes and adorns the throne of the khaqan, sultan of the sultans of the world, pnde

.

sb

of kmgs and emperors among Arabs and Pers1ans, Solomon of the age, Alexander of the

beautiful characteristics and purity of Intention, and more trusted in religion and Islamic law than any ruler of the Islamic nation, and he is the sultan, son of sultan, emperor, son of emperor, H1s Majesty Ahmed Khan, whose lineage goes back uninterruptedly to the son of Osman-may God perpetuate the days of his k1ngship and fortune and strengthen the foundat1on of his glory and magnificence-this humble writer, the least and most •ns•gn•f•cant of his servants and smallest of the slaves in his retmue, who has been inundated by his generosity and liberality among the respected viziers, i.e., his servant Kalender, has gathered, arranged, and adorned these above-mentioned pages ill ustrated, g1lded, and beaut1futly wntten and presented them as a gift to his imperial presence so that, whatever the 1mperial Intention may be, when taking an augury, after f1rst reciting the chapter Fot1ho and thrice use lkh/os and three repetitions of the noble

so/ovot2 [Folio 6a] wherever the book is opened, in accordance with what was mentioned above, the mcomparable imperial gaze should fall upon that illustrated and ruled leaf, and the forms of the prophets and samts written about on the nght-hand page should fill the 1mpet1al nature w1th abundant effulgence of multiple blessings, and his augury will be in accordance w1th the 1mperial will. 0 lord.

as long as the shape of the moon, stars, and sun

remnm stable upon the page of the celes l!ol sphere, As long as the rulmg of the hoflzon contmues to be drown across the tablet of down, and as long as the rednt.>Ss of down g rmd s cmnabor to make a book of the sky, May the om!'n of the emperor of the world be auspicious, and may eyery mtentran he makes be truly the "openmg of o gate "

time. env•ed by Caesars, emulated by Chosroes, who propagates the most magnif1cent

From God IS gwdonce and 1mmow/ateness m the begmmng and the end.

government eastward and westward, who spreads the greatest JUStiCe 10 longitude and

0 God.

lat1tude, who is alone among all great rulers 1n his splendor, glory, JUStice. and equ1ty,

perpetuate h1s fortune w1th long life until t1me cea ses

and support h1s exo/tedness w1th the spread of JUStice

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Appendix A 3

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[Folio 7a-Sa'di Dressed as a Chinese Monkk]

[Folio Sa-Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise]

0 augury seeker, know that there IS a tale of Shaykh Sa'dt entenng the realm of Chm

H1s E•cellency Adam was expelled from the garden from parad1se

during his travels i n the guise of a monk. Although the beginn.ng of th•s omen •s indicative of a certain amount of erroneousness, its end IS good Your heart I S not stable. There is loss in mingling with those who are not of your sort. but you are aware of their deceit and will triumph over them, Just as happened to Shaykh Sa'd• He says, �During my travels across the world I saw 1n a temple called Sumnat tn Ch1na an tdol made of ivory that had been placed on an ebony platform Those who saw tl thought •t was standing on its feet, and the people of that region rubbed the1r faces on its feet From time to time the tdol would ra1se 1ts arm Astomshed by this s1tuat1on. I remained by myself in the temple that night 1n order to learn 1ts secret. I saw that under the ebony platform had been drawn a curta1n, and beh1nd it was seated a pnest with a rope in his hand. When he pulled the rope the 1dol would ra1se 1ts arm. When I saw this trick, I killed the priest and set out for my homeland The next morning the

by order of the noble lord The trutll 1s that he who craves dtvme pleasure must w1llmgly subm1t h1s soul 0 augury seeker, know and be aware that Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise

has turned up as your omen. The beginning of this omen ind1cates great disturbance, but there is hope that the end w1H be good and indicative of happiness and joy. From this 1ntention 1t is understood that the Deity-magnificent and sublime is he-has granted you wealth, enjoyment, and leisure, but you do not apprec iate that gift, and you allow corrupt thoughts to enter your heart. Beware, be content with your fate, and keep yourself from sataniC temptations. Avoid unworthy people and evil compan1ons that you may remain in eternal life and purity. Do not make excuses for not performing your prayers and bemg cha ntable that you may attain your goals.

trick became known, and most of the infidels ceased to bel1eve 1 n 1t."

[Folio 9a-Sulayman and Bilqis Enthron ed] Do you know what has turned up m your augury. 0 seeker'J The splendor of Asoph and the majesty of Solomon This omen works with the effulgence of the star of your ascendant Do not worry, and calm your distrac ted heart 0 augury seeker, know and be aware that the parad1s1acal assembly of the prophet

Solomon-God's prayers be upon our Prophet and upon h1m-has turned up as your omen. Good news! This omen ind1cates peace of mind and el1mmat1on of worry. If 11 1s for ravel, it is good. lf for commerce, you w111 see unlimited profit. I t is a good omen for buylng slave boys and girls, beasts, entermg a new house, weamng infants, and send1ng . chlld en t o a teacher for instruction. On a day hke today you w1ll gam a benefit and blessl g from an unknow n place. lt IS good to the htghest degree for seemg grandees and gaini.ng req uests· However, .1t IS necessary that you not be slack 1n your dally p rayers . 00 good 10 giving charity to the poor and m1serab that you may attain your desire le

�

� �

[Folio 10a-Khizr and llyas] Although Alexander went to a lot of troubleroommg the world,

he d1d not fmd the fountmn of youth But the prophet Kluzr become h1s compomon, and he found eternol l1fe wh1le Alexander gamed renown

0 augury seeker. know and be aware that the prophet Khizr and the prophet Elijah­ peace be upon our Prophet and upon them-who attained the fountain of youth, have come up as your omen. Good news for you! This omen indicates that requests will be granted, 1mportant business w1ll be done, and brightness will appear in your affairs. In this omen travel 1s good to the h1ghest degree and contains many benefits. If it is for c ommerce, 1t will be blessed to that same degree. I f you buy land, it will be gold. If you

des•re to serve grandees, do not delay and go by all means because you will see great benef1t. If your desire IS for mamage, begin negotiations without hesitation. However, you must not be unm1ndful of the Alm1ghty if you want to attain your destre.

The Falnama of Ahmed

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[folio 11a-Hud Tossing the People of Ad]

[folio ua-Abraham's Sacrifice]

When Ad's people became accustomed to m/1dellty

When the moon of lsma'1f's beauty rose. he was occeptob/e to the Almrghty

and were not obedrent to what thelf leaden. 50td, A host of wroth overwhelmed them as the derty afflicted

You too. should put yovr life on the path of God.

that people astray w1th colomllses

for lsma·tl's per(ect1 on was to be saw(sced

0 augury seeker, know and be aware that a s1gn of Ad's people has turned up as your omen. The derty-magnif•cent and exalted IS he-sent down his wrath upon that tube and cast the1r possess1ons to the wind o f destruction

3 Th1s omen

rndicates worry, sorrow, and grief, and ti ts not devotd of aggravation and pa1n

0 augury seeker, know and be aware that a depiction of the prophets Ibrahim (Abraham] and lshaq [Isaac] and Mount Arafat has come up as your omen. By God's command, Ibrahim wanted to sacrifice his son. but at that moment Gabriel, the messenger of the lord of the Universe, auived with a ram and said, �Ibrahim, the

In the end, however, i t IS good because. although a siCk person has endured much

lord sends greetings and says, 'The purpose was to test you to see whether love for

trouble and patn, God w1H1ng, sickness will turn to health, and whatever conJunction

Us or love for your son was greater in your heart. 0 my fnend, the purity of your

there was Will have passed. Travel and marnage are not good. Commerce, buying

mtent1on has become evident. Sacrifice this ram and remove your hand from IS

horses, mules. slaves, and slave gtrls are not blessed. It would be beIter to be

lsma'il '" Th•s omen

patient, occupy yourself w1th worsh1p and chanty, and not put off your prayers in

and entenng a new house.

blessed for all things, especially commerce, marriage, travel,

order that you atlatn your desire.

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[folio l)a-Paradise]

(Folio 14a-Abraham's Trial by Fire]

In what assembly have th��e ��111 th The Garden of /rom appt•Qr5 to the pe If m that specral btmquel m v.luch lh for a s1tuatron m honor 1/ b ·o,

I

(L/IIh'd mto a rose gatden (or lbrohrm v� 'llfO flte people of 1nsqwty. J

0 augury seeker,

I the land of relrg,on become safe and sound

turned the accursed Ntmrod's f1re mto a rose garden, has turned up as your omen.

Th1s omen ts good for travel. commerce. and marnage Gomg 1nto partnershtp and

goals, and you wtlt be free hom the d1stress of enemtes, the envious, goef, and

buymg slave boys and g1riS are blessed Entenng a new house and movu'g are

sadness II thts augury IS lor travel, set out w1thout worry. and you will see

know and be aware that lbrah1m, God's fnend, lor whom God

Thts omen mdrcates that you will have peace of m1nd and atta1n your wishes and

auspiCIOUS and blessed Altogether thts omen IS good for all busmess. but the seeker

unhm1ted prof1l If tl ts for commerce, mamage, or entenng a new house, it

of the omen must not swerve from the path of ch1valry to attatn htgh pos1t10n and

•s fchcitous. An absent pe rson wtlf come m good health and JOin you. and a SICk

wealth, and he must not be slack i n monotheism, chanty, or the ftve darly prayers.

person wtl1 recover However, do not neglect your prescribed prayers and give

if he is to attam h•s dewe

alms m order to atta1n your destre

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0 augury seeker. know and be aware that a dep1CI1on of the Garden of lram has turned up as your omen Good news 1 Th1s omen 1nd•cates pleasure, happtness, JOy,

and the gates of weallh and felic1ty 10 thrs world and the next are open to you

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