The Mystery of Numbers

Annemarie Schimmel was a scholar of Islamic and comparative religious studies whose comparative method here works directly from primary numerological material across Judaic, Christian, Islamic and Indian tradition rather than treating any one tradition's number symbolism as universal. The book is itself an adaptation of an earlier German study by Franz Carl Endres, extended and revised by Schimmel with her own added comparative material, a documented editorial lineage this record states rather than presenting the book as written from nothing. Its structure, individual chapters for the numbers one through twenty one and selective treatment of higher numbers, reflects where surviving comparative material is actually dense rather than an even survey. Use it for established comparative facts about what a specific number has meant across these traditions; a claim about a single tradition's own doctrinal use of a number may still need that tradition's own source alongside it.