Unrecorded divination manuscript copied and previously owned by an Ottoman chief astrologer

Abd Allah ibn Abi al-Ma'ali al-Mahfuf al-Munajjim; (and) Ja'far al-Sadiq (attrib.). Kitab Kashf al-asrar wa kifayat al-akhyar fi 'ilm al-tanjim wa ma'rifat manazil al-shams wa'l-qamar (and) Qur'a ramliyya li'l-Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq.

€ 6,500.00

A previously unknown and unrecorded two text divinatory compendium, uniting astrology and geomancy in a compact Ottoman working manuscript. The first work, Kashf al-asrar wa kifayat al-akhyar fi 'ilm al-tanjim wa ma'rifat manazil al-shams wa'l-qamar, is a previously unrecorded manual by 'Abd ibn Abi al-Munajjim (d. ca. 1397 CE), an author remembered for his work on geomancy.

The text sets out the divinatory implications of atmospheric and astronomical events, including thunder, lightning, winds, solar and lunar eclipses, and the weekday on which a month begins. Each section is arranged for practical consultation: lightning in one month carries a different meaning from lightning in another, winds are interpreted according to the month in which they occur, and the beginning of Muharram on Monday produces a different prediction from its beginning on Tuesday. The result is a concise and serviceable reference tool for the astrologer tasked with interpretation.

From about fol. 40, the volume continues in the same hand with Qur'a ramliyya li'l-Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, a second work of equal importance that confirms the codex as a deliberate compendium of the occult sciences.- Together, the two texts offer a practical survey of interconnected methods by which the learned practitioner might read terrestrial signs, celestial events, calendrical patterns, and geomantic configurations.

The colophon is especially appealing, recording that the manuscript was copied by Abdulkadir bin Mahmud, styled Munajjim-bashi (Müneccimba ). This title identifies him as one of the chief astrologers of the Ottoman Empire, linking the transmission of the text to the scholarly prestige attached to courtly astrology in the Ottoman world.

Whether copied for study or for active professional use, the codex belongs to the durable manuscript culture of applied astral knowledge, in which concise handbooks continued to circulate as authoritative tools of judgment. An attractive and unusually serviceable survival, valuable both for the apparent rarity of the first text and for the presence of the second treatise in the same carefully organized volume.