When Western readers hear “the Book of Daniel,” they picture the Babylonian exile, the den of lions, the dream of the statue, and the apocalyptic visions of the four beasts. That is the Biblical Book of Daniel — a second-century BCE composition written in Hebrew and Aramaic. It is preserved in the Old Testament and the Septuagint. It is the foundational text of the apocalyptic tradition in both Judaism and Christianity.

The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi — the Book of the Prophet Daniel circulated in medieval Arabic manuscript culture — is an entirely different text. It shares only the name of its attributed author.

This article is about that second book — an astrological Book of Daniel, read from the sky rather than from visions. If you came looking for the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible, the comparison below sets the two side by side. If you came looking for Daniel in Arabic — Danyal, or Daniyal — and the prognostic writings that carry his name, read on.

Daniel in the Islamic Tradition

To understand the Arabic Daniel text, it is necessary to understand how Daniel (Danyal) figures in the Islamic tradition. Daniel is not mentioned by name in the Quran. But he appears extensively in post-Quranic Islamic literature. He appears in the genre of qisas al-anbiya’ (stories of the prophets), in historical compilations, and in the literature of celestial and prophetic knowledge.

In Islamic tradition, he is treated as a prophet or holy man of the Israelite lineage, a figure of wisdom and divinely disclosed knowledge. He is also cast as a contemporary of the Babylonian captivity who possessed foreknowledge of events stretching across the ages.

Daniel was understood as a prophet of divinatory and celestial knowledge — not primarily of apocalyptic narrative. That understanding provided the basis for attributing to him, in the Arabic manuscript tradition, texts dealing with astronomical and astrological prognostication. The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi belongs to the broader genre of Arabic pseudepigraphic wisdom literature. These are texts attributed to ancient prophets, sages, or kings (Solomon, Daniel, Idris/Enoch, Hermes) as a way of grounding their content in authoritative tradition.

What the Kitab Danyal al-Nabi Contains

The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi is organized around three interlocking divinatory systems, all of which read celestial events as signs of terrestrial consequences. This is, fundamentally, a work of practical astronomical divination. It is not apocalyptic prophecy, not narrative theology, but a systematic method for reading the sky to anticipate what will happen on earth.

The Zodiacal Earthquake System

The most distinctive section of the text is its zodiacal earthquake prognostication. It gives a systematic account of the nature, location, and consequences of earthquakes based on the zodiac sign in which the earthquake occurs. In some versions, it is the sign in which the Moon or a key planet resides at the time of the earthquake.

The earthquake readings sit in Part Two, “Prognostications by the Day of Entry” (Aḥkām al-Dukhūl). It has sections for a year “born” in Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Libra, Leo, Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn. Two of them name the earthquake outright. In a year born in Cancer “the land will be shaken by earthquake,” and in a year born in Libra “the anger and the earthquake will be severe.” A separate statement on earthquakes and thunderbolts gives omens month by month.

For the person born under each sign, see what the manuscript says about each sign. For the earthquake omens, see Prophet Daniel’s Manuscript: Earthquakes by Zodiac.

The Lunar Mansion Omen System

The twenty-eight lunar mansions (manazil al-qamar) are the stations of the Moon as it moves through the sky over the course of a lunar month. Each mansion corresponds to a specific group of stars, and each carries an astrological significance for human affairs. The Arabic tradition inherited this system from Indian and Hellenistic sources and developed it extensively.

The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi includes an omen system tied to the lunar mansions. For each mansion it gives a set of prognostications specifying what the Moon’s presence in that mansion portends. These prognostications cover a wide range of human concerns — travel, commerce, warfare, agriculture, birth, illness, and the fate of specific categories of people. The lunar mansion material in the Kitab Danyal connects it to the broader Arabic tradition of manazil-based divination. That tradition was enormously influential across the Islamic world.

Celestial Disaster Prediction

Beyond earthquakes and lunar mansion omens, the text contains prognostic material dealing with other categories of celestial disaster. These include floods, droughts, plagues, comets, eclipses, and unusual meteorological events. Each type of celestial event is interpreted through the framework of the zodiac and planetary positions. A solar eclipse in Scorpio portends differently from one in Libra; a comet in Leo carries different implications from one in Capricorn.

This disaster-prognostication material places the Kitab Danyal al-Nabi in a long tradition of Arabic celestial omen literature. That tradition includes works attributed to Abu Ma’shar, al-Qazwini’s encyclopedic natural history, and dozens of other texts. These deal with the relationship between celestial events and terrestrial consequences. The attribution to Daniel gave this material the authority of prophetic precedent in the Islamic context.

The Manuscript’s Own Table of Contents

In the translated manuscript, this material is laid out in a sequence of short sections. Its opening heading presents the whole as a book “on the zodiac signs and magic, the benefits of medicinal herbs, precious stones, the Tablet of Life, death, the treatment of diseases, warfare, and other matters.” Its parts are:

  • The Tablet of Life and the Tablet of Death (Lawh al-Hayat, Lawh al-Mamat): used when the reader is asked about a sick person. The reader adds the abjad value of the questioner’s name, the day, the Arabic month, and the lunar date, divides the total by three, and reads the remainder on the chart.
  • The Discourse on the Days of the Month and a Guide to the Mansions of the Moon, which reads the lunar month day by day. The first day is favorable for commerce and contracts; the twenty-eighth is a day on which one should neither travel nor marry.
  • Part One: The Zodiac Signs and Their Nativities (al-Buruj wa-Mawaliduha), a portrait of the person born under each of the twelve signs. Each sign is given with its ruling planet and month.
  • Part Two: Prognostications by the Day of Entry (Ahkam al-Dukhul), which reads the coming year from the weekday on which it enters: plentiful grain if Sunday; drought, war, and scarcity if Monday. It is followed by short statements on meteors, the eclipse of the Moon, the rainbow, thunder, earthquakes and thunderbolts, and lightning.
  • Part Three: Medical Remedies and Beneficial Herbs (al-Mujarrabat al-Tibbiyya).

Part One begins with a method rather than a birth date: to find a person’s sign, “calculate his name according to the abjad values and divide it by twelve. The remainder indicates which sign from among the twelve zodiac signs” he was born under.

The twelve are given by their Arabic names — al-Hamal (Aries), al-Thawr (Taurus), al-Jawza’ (Gemini), al-Saratan (Cancer), al-Asad (Leo), al-Sunbula (Virgo), al-Mizan (Libra), al-’Aqrab (Scorpio), al-Qaws (Sagittarius), al-Jady (Capricorn), al-Dalw (Aquarius), and al-Hut (Pisces). For what this Arabic zodiac says about each sign in turn, see the zodiac signs in Arabic according to the Book of Daniel.

How the Arabic Book of Daniel Differs from the Biblical Book of Daniel

The contrast between the Arabic and Biblical Daniel texts is total at the level of content and genre. The Biblical Book of Daniel is a narrative and apocalyptic text. Its first half contains court narratives: stories of Daniel and his companions at the Babylonian court. The stories tell of their faithfulness under persecution and their miraculous deliverances (the fiery furnace, the den of lions). Its second half contains visionary apocalypticism. It has beasts rising from the sea, the “Ancient of Days,” the seventy weeks of years, and the final conflict between the kings of the north and south.

The Arabic Kitab Danyal al-Nabi contains none of this. There are no court narratives, no fiery furnaces, no apocalyptic beasts. What it contains instead is a systematic divinatory treatise: twelve zodiac signs, twenty-eight lunar mansions, a typology of celestial disasters, and a method for reading the sky to anticipate what will happen next on earth.

The two texts belong to entirely different genres and were produced in entirely different historical contexts. The Biblical Book of Daniel was composed during the Maccabean crisis in second-century BCE Judea. It used historical narrative and visionary symbolism to encourage Jewish resistance under Seleucid persecution. The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi is a medieval Islamic-era compilation of astrological prognostication material. It was organized for practical use by readers who needed a reference for reading celestial events.

What they share is an attribution — and that attribution is not coincidental. The Islamic tradition’s Daniel is a prophet of celestial knowledge. Texts dealing with the reading of the heavens were naturally gathered under his name as a marker of authority and prophetic sanction.

The Text’s Sources and Intellectual Context

The material in the Kitab Danyal al-Nabi draws from several intellectual currents that merged in medieval Islamic civilization:

Babylonian omen astronomy: The ancient Mesopotamian tradition of reading celestial events as omens provides the basic logic of celestial omen interpretation. That tradition was preserved in the vast Enuma Anu Enlil series and transmitted through Hellenistic channels into the Arabic-speaking world. The form of the material (“if the Moon is in such-and-such position, such-and-such will occur”) is structurally Babylonian in origin.

Hellenistic astrology: The zodiacal and planetary framework through which the Arabic manuscript tradition interprets celestial events is Hellenistic. It comprises the twelve signs, the seven planets, the aspect system, and the associations between planets and earthly domains. This material entered Arabic scientific culture through the great translation movement of the eighth through tenth centuries. It became the dominant interpretive framework for celestial events.

Indian astronomical tradition: The lunar mansion system — twenty-eight manazil — derives ultimately from Indian astronomical and astrological tradition. It was transmitted to the Arabic world through Persian intermediaries. The Indian nakshatra system and the Arabic manazil system are cognate traditions. Both address the same astronomical phenomenon (the monthly progress of the Moon through its stations). The omen material attached to each mansion bears traces of both Indian and Hellenistic influence.

Islamic prophetic authority: The attribution to Daniel grounds the text within the Islamic tradition of revealed knowledge. The text presents itself not as mere astrological calculation but as prophetically disclosed wisdom. That wisdom is knowledge of celestial signs given to a prophet who could read their meaning.

The Zodiac Signs as Geographic Keys

One of the most distinctive features of the Kitab Danyal al-Nabi is its geographic mapping of the sky. Under the heading “Dominion of the Planets” (Tadbīr al-Kawākib), the manuscript assigns lands to signs and to one planet:

  • Taurus: Babylon
  • Leo: the land of Asia
  • Virgo (named only as “the sixth” sign, which the translator identifies as Virgo): Italy
  • Sagittarius: Cilicia
  • Capricorn: Syria
  • Pisces: the Levant (al-Shām) and its regions
  • Jupiter (a planet, not a sign): the lands of Persia

The list does not cover all twelve signs. This geographic astrology reflects a cosmological understanding in which the celestial and terrestrial worlds are organized in a parallel hierarchy — each part of the earth standing under the governance of a corresponding celestial power.

The companion article gives an Arabic horoscope for each of the twelve signs. It sets out what the Kitab Danyal al-Nabi says about the person born under each sign, with its ruling planet and month.

The Text in Context: The Broader Arabic Divinatory Literature

The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi does not stand alone in the Arabic manuscript tradition. It belongs to a rich genre of Arabic divinatory and prognostic texts that developed across the medieval Islamic world. The genre drew from Babylonian, Hellenistic, Persian, and Indian sources and synthesized them into a coherent Islamic framework. These texts were used by practitioners who needed to read the signs of the times. The practitioners might advise rulers on when to undertake campaigns, farmers on when to plant, or individuals on the celestial quality of a particular moment for a particular action.

The great Arabic astrologer Abu Ma’shar (d. 886 CE) produced similar material on planetary conjunctions and their historical consequences. Abu Ma’shar is also the astrologer whose works were translated into Latin and became foundational for European medieval astrology. The Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Brethren of Purity) included astronomical and astrological content in their encyclopedic treatment of the sciences. The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi represents the specifically prophetically-framed version of this tradition: astrological prognostication given the weight of Danielic authority.

The translated manuscript makes that link explicit. Its heading credits the compilation to “Abu Ma’shar al-Falaki, the Great Philosopher,” so that the book stands under two authorities at once: Daniel the prophet and Abu Ma’shar the astrologer. For the wider world of medieval Arabic astrology manuscripts that this material belongs to, see the companion survey.

Malhamat Daniyal and the Arabic Prognostication Genre

Readers searching for the Malhamat Daniyal are looking for the same family of texts. In Arabic, prognostic works of this kind — predictions read from eclipses, thunder, earthquakes, and the day on which the year begins — are known as malhama literature. Daniel is one of the names most often attached to them.

The Book of Daniel manuscript translated here is titled Kitab Danyal al-Nabi, the Book of the Prophet Daniel — published here as Kitab Daniel — rather than Malhamat Daniyal. But its statements on thunder, lightning, eclipses, and earthquakes, and its readings of the year by its day of entry, are the material that genre is known for.

It is, in short, an astrological Book of Daniel: a manual of omens and nativities, not a book of visions. That is the clearest way to distinguish it from the Book of Daniel most readers know.

Reading the Arabic Book of Daniel in English Translation

The Kitab Danyal al-Nabi (Vol. I) in the John Friend Publishing series is the first scholarly English translation of this medieval Arabic text. The translation is made from the Arabic source text, and where the source is illegible the translator notes the lacuna rather than inventing content.

The edition follows the conventions of the whole series. Its translator’s note sets out IJMES romanization with full diacritical marks, barbarous names transliterated exactly beside the original Arabic script, and any talismanic figures reproduced as images from the source manuscript.

For readers interested in how the Kitab Danyal relates to the broader Arabic occult manuscript tradition, the articles on the series as a whole and on individual texts provide useful orientation. The article on the 28 lunar mansions in Arabic magic covers the manazil system that underlies one of the Kitab Danyal’s three operative sections. For the relationship of Arabic zodiacal prognostication to the broader classical tradition, see the Wikipedia article on astrology in medieval Islam. It provides a starting map of the field.