The ‘Restored’ Shīʿīmuṣḥafas Divine Guide? The Practice offāl-i Qurʾānin the Ṣafavid Period

Abstract

This study argues that the exponential growth of divinatory texts variously attributed to ʿAlī and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq included at the end of Qur'ans produced during the Ṣafavid period provides further evidence for the widespread interest in divination during the tenth/sixteenth and eleventh/seventeenth centuries in Iran. Treatises on ‘divination by the Qur'an’ (fāl-i Qurʾān) indicate that it was considered permissible to seek guidance by means of holy scripture at this time. On a more symbolic level, fāl-i Qurʾāns can be understood as a kind of restoration of the ‘defective’ ʿUthmānic codex by re-Shīʿifying it – if not by reinserting supposedly dropped verses on the ahl al-bayt, then at the very least by adding terminal divinations attributed to the figureheads of Shīʿī Islam. This particular practice therefore follows general ‘Shīʿification’ trends found in a number of cultural and artistic practices of the Ṣafavid period, which also are potentially discernible within the domain of Qur'an production.