A prose fortune tellıng: hazâ kitâbu fâl-ı kur’ân

Humans have been curious about discovering what lies in the great beyond and predicting the future since practically the dawn of time. Over the millennia, they’ve used stars, animal bones, bird flight patterns, and even books to achieve that – with techniques and tools alike showing immense variation depending the period and geography in question. Nevertheless, fortune telling is seemingly universal acrost most cultures. In the context of Ottoman-Turkish culture, this art is referred to as “fal.” As such, Ottoman-era fortune telling guide books or manuals were called “fal-name.” Koranic fal-names (commonly dubbed “fâl-ı Kur’an” or “tefeülname) proved especially popular. Some were written in verse, some in prose, and others in a mixture of both. In this study, we have examined one such a book: Hâzâ Kitâbu Fâl-ı Kur’an (55Hk519/6, Samsun Provincial Library Collection). We’ve specifically focused on folios 63b through 65b (out of 111 in total). While the author remains unknown, he do know that it was penned in around 1735 or 1736 CE (1147 AH). The book talks at length about how one should go about reading a fortune at the beginning. Arranged in alphabetical order, every (abjad) letter corresponds with an ayah from the Quran, followed by two possible interpretations, one good, the other bad. We’ve transcribed the folios in question into the Modern Turkish (Latin) alphabet, and analysed them for content, orthography, and language.