Arab Divination and Fortune-Telling

Arab traders brought coffee back to the peninsula from Ethiopia, where, legend has it, coffee beans were first discovered by a goat herder in that golden 9th century that marked the height of Arab civilization in many ways. It wasn't until the 15th century that coffee made it to Constantinople (modern day Istanbul/Turkey) and its preparation became less elaborate than the hours of boiling that Arabic coffee requires. Most of us, even throughout the Arab world, enjoy a variation on Turkish coffee as the more traditional forms of preparation of Arabic coffee have become less and less feasible. The difference between Turkish and Arabic coffee is primarily in the preparation. Arabic coffee usually contains crushed cardamon and because it is boiled for hours using hot sand (or weak embers), it leaves virtually no sediments. Turkish coffee on the other hand leaves that thick coat at the bottom and is prepared nowadays with an open flame.  From this, you would think that coffee cup reading began with Turkish coffee not Arabic coffee and therefore with the Turks, but I am not able to substantiate exactly where and with whom coffee cup divination began. 

Some scholars deduce that the practice was developed in line with tea-leaf reading practices in ancient China and among the Celts.  Taseography is the name given to divination based on interpretation of tea leaves and coffee sediments inside cups. The principle of the divination is the same, it is an art of identifying and interpreting symbols which can be taught and on which numerous books have been written.

The desert Arabs can certainly be credited with a unique form of divination known as Darb al-Raml (literally "the throwing of sand") which was honed into an extraordinary ritual. If you are lucky enough, you can occasionally find a practitioner of Darb al-Raml willing to share their art with you, particularly among the Bedouins of the Levant or the Peninsula. In more contemporary times, especially in light of a tidal wave of Wahhabi and Salafi influence, divination has become somewhat of a taboo, seen as belonging to pre-Islamic Jahiliya. There is a correct hadith in Muslim attributed to the prophet in which he says that the prayers of a person who seeks the advice of a fortune teller are invalidated for forty nights. What is more, some verses in the Quran clearly indicate that knowledge of the future is for God alone (see 6:59 and 27:65), and that humans would be doing ill to consult the Jinn to unlawfully receive information about the future, when even the Prophet himself had to contend with this unknowing (see 7: 188). Despite such interpretations, however, there is no universal consensus on the prohibition of Darb al- Raml, and millennial exegetes expressly permitted it (for example the Fatwa of the Egyptian Faqeeh of the Shafi3i school of thought, Siraj al-Deen al-Balqani who died in h. 805/ 1402 A.D.).

Salat al-Istikhara, or the Guidance Prayer, is the only form of "divination" that is not said to contradict Quranic commandment, as far as I know, and this is perhaps because the ritual requires the believer to ask God (and no other) for guidance through dream symbology or direct life events in relation to a specific matter. We can talk about al-Istikhara and Laylat al-Qadr during Ramadan in a different post. Let's go back to Darb al-Raml. The film clip below is from a Niazi Mustapha film (yes, this is the guy who gave us Bint  Ismaha Mahmoud and that awful film with a lesbian sub-plot called al-Mut3a Wal 3athab). Rab7a (a.k.a Koka) was filmed in 1945 and suffers some serious self-orientalism with its civilized bashawat and simple bedou. Rab7a, the film's protagonist, falls in love with an English gentleman and he with her, of course she has an evil cousin who wants to marry her! Added to this intentionally comic mix is the eccentric English woman who loves to paint everything in her path. I am not going to go into how servile this film was to the monarchy and the Ottoman and English regencies at the time because it's nice to put the postcolonial angst aside every now and then. I am showing this clip for its (not entirely accurate) depiction of the divination system they call "Darb al-Raml." Rab7a wants to know if she is going to see her sweetheart again and in her consternation about the future, her friend suggests that they should consult the sand. Her friend gives her the good news that the way is open to her fulfilling her heart's desire, moments later, however, her friends come to tell her that her father has agreed to her cousin's request to marry her. Disappointed, she declares that "even the sand is lying." 

I narrowly missed out on having my own experience with Darb al-Raml in Jordan. After I made several inquiries, I was told that a Bedouin woman had, several years earlier, been offering her services at a local marketplace in Amman, but only during Ramadan and the following Eid festivities, as this seems to be the time of year where things otherwise not permitted are accommodated (that and controversial prime time TV programming!). I was more successful with coffee cup readings, but this is a story for another post. In the New Testament (John 8:6), Jesus bends over and draws in the sand during his encounter with the town people, moments before he delivers his brilliant: "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone." He does this in response to the pressure exerted on him in relation to how Mary Magdalene's fornication should be dealt with.  Was this the first instance of Darb al-Raml on record? Was Jesus trying to figure out if pardoning her would end well? I don't think so, but I couldn't help but make the association given the illegibility of what he drew in the sand that moment, a question that has inspired and haunted theologians for centuries.