Abstract:

Fal-namah is the general name of works in prose or verse that foretell the future, the unseen, and give advice and warnings based on the interpretation of various presumptions. Qurʾān fals based on Qurʾān letters or verses are the most popular of the fāl-namah genre. Since these occultist texts are generally small in volume, the majority of them are in collections and most of them have unknown authors and even unknown scribes. Aside from their literary value, these works have many folkloric materials such as language, religion, culture, etc., they should be emphasized regardless of whether they are in verse or prose.  In this article, a previously unknown prose Qurān fal-namah based on letters is discussed. This fal-namah, which is unknown when and by whom it was written, can be found in the Atıf Efendi Collection of the Atıf Efendi Library under the location number 02790-032, between 190b-193a. In the fal-namah, whose full title is “Hâzâ fî Beyân-i Ma'rifet-i Fâl-i Kur'ân-ı 'Azîm”, after the phrase “if ... comes, ke-ḳavlihi Te'âlâ”, verses from the Qur'ān are cited as evidence to interpret 29 letters and some positive and negative judgments about the future are reported. In our study, the aforementioned fal-namah, which is understood to have been written in the Old Anatolian Turkish period, is introduced and analyzed, and the text is transliterated into Latin letters.

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