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Lot Essay
These folios are from a manual on ‘geomancy’, from the Latin geomantia, a translation of the Arabic ‘ilm al-ramal (the science of sand), this was a system of divination attributed to the archangel Jibra’il (Gabriel) and popular at least as early as the AD 1250s, when geomancers of Qutuz, who would become the third Mamluk sultan, predicted his ascension and victory over the Mongols.
The figures named in the titles are al-’ataba al-kharija (The Outer Threshold), shakl al-hamra (The Red Form), al-inkis (The Inverted), and al-nusra al-kharija (The External Victory), with the manual body explaining the relation between each geomantic figure and its associated house, colour, day, planet, letter, mineral, and personality. The indented ninth line of each folio urges the reader to heed the advice of the urjuza (didactic verse) on the geomantic figure or geomancy itself, comprising the final four lines.
In A Thousand and One Nights, Qamar al-Zaman carries ‘a set of instruments, as well as a [geometric] divination tablet’ while posing as a fortune-teller in order to access the palace, saying ‘I am he who calculates, who knows what is hidden, who divines the answers, and who writes charms’ (Emily Savage-Smith, ‘Divination’, in Emily Savage-Smith, Science, Tools, and Magic: Part One, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection, Oxford, 1997, pp.148-49). Geomancy could be executed complemented by a variety of tools, such as the geomantic plate, dice, and text written on cloth, examples of which are all held in the Khalili Collection. Dice constituted divination's most accessible form, and geomantic literature was reserved for the most educated class of divinator (Savage-Smith, op.cit., nos.105, 108-111, pp.152-159).
Ibn Khaldun wrote extensively on the subject, stating in his Muqaddimah: ‘Geomancy is prevalent in civilised regions. There exists a literature dealing with it. Outstanding ancient and modern personalities were famous for it’ (Ibn Khaldun, trans. F. Rosenthal, ed. N. J. Dawood, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Princeton, 2005, pp.159-60). Manuals on geomancy are also cited by a 13th century geomantic table inscription in the British Museum, which states that ‘from my intricacies there comes about insight superior to books concerned with the study of the art’ (acc.no.1888,0526.1).
The figures named in the titles are al-’ataba al-kharija (The Outer Threshold), shakl al-hamra (The Red Form), al-inkis (The Inverted), and al-nusra al-kharija (The External Victory), with the manual body explaining the relation between each geomantic figure and its associated house, colour, day, planet, letter, mineral, and personality. The indented ninth line of each folio urges the reader to heed the advice of the urjuza (didactic verse) on the geomantic figure or geomancy itself, comprising the final four lines.
In A Thousand and One Nights, Qamar al-Zaman carries ‘a set of instruments, as well as a [geometric] divination tablet’ while posing as a fortune-teller in order to access the palace, saying ‘I am he who calculates, who knows what is hidden, who divines the answers, and who writes charms’ (Emily Savage-Smith, ‘Divination’, in Emily Savage-Smith, Science, Tools, and Magic: Part One, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection, Oxford, 1997, pp.148-49). Geomancy could be executed complemented by a variety of tools, such as the geomantic plate, dice, and text written on cloth, examples of which are all held in the Khalili Collection. Dice constituted divination's most accessible form, and geomantic literature was reserved for the most educated class of divinator (Savage-Smith, op.cit., nos.105, 108-111, pp.152-159).
Ibn Khaldun wrote extensively on the subject, stating in his Muqaddimah: ‘Geomancy is prevalent in civilised regions. There exists a literature dealing with it. Outstanding ancient and modern personalities were famous for it’ (Ibn Khaldun, trans. F. Rosenthal, ed. N. J. Dawood, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Princeton, 2005, pp.159-60). Manuals on geomancy are also cited by a 13th century geomantic table inscription in the British Museum, which states that ‘from my intricacies there comes about insight superior to books concerned with the study of the art’ (acc.no.1888,0526.1).