Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device

Emilie Savage-Smith and Marion Smith's study is built around a specific, dated brass geomantic instrument, working from that physical artifact alongside the textual tradition of ilm al-raml, Islamic geomancy, to give the principal scholarly account of the system before its later transmission into Latin Europe. That combination of a documented physical instrument and the textual record is the study's real evidentiary basis. Use it for established scholarly facts about Islamic geomancy in its own historical and technical context; it addresses the system prior to its transmission westward, so a claim about the later medieval Latin geomantic tradition needs a source such as Charmasson's study of that later development.