Augury text for Salih Bids the She-Camel from a Rock

MehranDHN

This Falnamah (‘Book of Divination’) is one of the few complete – or near complete – copies of the work to have survived. It consists of a series of 35 double-page openings, each with a large miniature on the right-hand page (i.e., the verso). On the opposite page (the recto) is a caption for the painting and an explanation which predicts the outcome of the scene depicted in terms of delivering good, bad or variable fortune: if the prediction is unfavourable, the text recommends how to forestall it, delay a decision or buy one’s way out of it with a charitable donation. The first folio is the only one to have a painting on each of the recto and verso. That on the recot may possibly be the left-hand half of a double frontispiece. The text accompanying the painting on the last folio (36b) is missing. The paintings can also be viewed for their own sake, for which purpose a second caption in Persian was added beneath each scene at a later date. The varied subjects include episodes from al-Kisa’i Qisas al-Anbiya’ (‘Tales of the Prophets’), an anthology of Christian, Jewish and Muslim legends; episodes from the life of the Prophet Muhammad; episodes from Nizami’s Khamsah; and depictions of miracle-working Sufis. Other illustrated Falnamahs suggest that they first became popular in Iran in the later 16th century and spread rapidly to Ottoman Turkey and to the Qutb Shahi court at Golconda.