]

[Footnote 543: Keszr.]

[Footnote 544: Burton adds, "and confections."]

[Footnote 545: Lit. "he set them down the stablest or skilfullest
(mustehhkem) setting down."]

[Footnote 546: Hherrem, i.e. arranged them, according to the rules of
the geomantic art.]

[Footnote 547: Netsera jeyyidan fi. Burton, "He firmly established the
sequence of."]

[Footnote 548: Technical names of the primary and secondary figures.
The following account of the geomantic process, as described by
Arabic writers de re magicf, is mainly derived from the Mukeddimat or
Prolegomena of Abdurrehman ibn Aboubekr Mohammed (better known as Ibn
Khaldoun) to his great work of universal history. Those (says he) who
seek to discover hidden things and know the future have invented an art
which they call tracing or smiting the sand; to wit, they take paper
or sand or flour and trace thereon at hazard four rows of points, which
operation, three times repeated (i.e. four times performed), gives
sixteen rows. These points they eliminate two by two, all but the last
(if the number of the points of a row be odd) or the last two (if it be
even) of each row, by which means they obtain sixteen points, single
or double. These they divide into four figures, each representing the
residual points of four lines, set one under another, and these four
figures, which are called the mothers or primaries, they place side by
side in one line. From these primaries they extract four fresh figures
by confronting each point with the corresponding point in the next
figure, and counting for each pair a single or double point, according
to one of two rules, i.e. (1) setting down a single point for each
single point being on the same line with another point, whether single
or double, and a double point for. each pair of double points in line
with each other, or (2) reckoning a double point for each pair of like
points (single or double), corresponding one with another on the same
line' and a single point for each, unlike pair. These new figures (as
well as those that follow) are called the daughters or secondaries and
are placed beside the primaries, by confrontation with which (i,e, 5
with 1, 6 with 2, 7 with 3 and with 4) four fresh figures are obtained
after the same fashion and placed side by side below the first eight.
From this second row a thirteenth and fourteenth figure are obtained in
the same way (confronting 9 with lo and 1 l with 12) and placed beneath
them, a