The Book of the Prophet Daniel (Kitab Daniel)

What's Inside Kitab Daniel

• Zodiacal divination tables attributed to the Prophet Daniel, covering predictions for each sign of the Arabic astrological tradition.
• Earthquake omens and what each direction of tremor signifies for rulers, harvests, and the fate of cities.
• Abjad calendrical calculations for predicting events — a numerical divination system rooted in the Arabic letter tradition.
• Traditional remedies linked to celestial signs, blending folk medicine with Islamic cosmological thought.

Kitab Daniel: The Arabic Book of Daniel Manuscript

Kitab Daniel — in Arabic Kitab Daniyal al-Nabi, since Daniel in Arabic is Daniyal — is a medieval Arabic treatise of prognostication attributed to the Prophet Daniel. Its heading credits the compilation to Abu Ma’shar al-Falaki al-Kabir, “the Great Philosopher,” and the translator dates the text to roughly the 9th to 11th centuries. This English translation of the Arabic Book of Daniel opens with the table of abjad letter values on which its calculations depend.

It is not a copy of the biblical Book of Daniel. If you are hunting for an ancient manuscript of the Book of Daniel — the Hebrew and Aramaic text preserved in the Old Testament — you want a different work. Among Book of Daniel manuscripts, this is a medieval one of another kind, shaped by a tradition that saw Daniel as a prophet of celestial knowledge: a manual of zodiac signs, omens and remedies. For how the two Daniels differ, read the astrological Book of Daniel in the Arabic tradition.

The twelve signs, from al-Hamal to al-Hut

Part One, on the zodiac signs and their nativities, works sign by sign from al-Hamal (Aries), ruled by Mars, and al-Thawr (Taurus), ruled by Venus, through to al-Hut (Pisces), ruled by Jupiter, with a separate section on the zodiac signs of women. The book also gives signs and planets dominion over lands: Jupiter over Persia, Taurus over Babylon, Pisces over the Levant. For a reader’s tour of the zodiac signs in Arabic and English, see our companion essay.

Find your Daniel zodiac sign by name

The book’s method for a nativity is numerical: calculate a person’s name by its abjad values, divide by twelve, and the remainder gives the sign. The same abjad reckoning drives its Tablet of Life and Death, which answers questions about a sick or absent person from the name of the questioner, the day, the Arabic month and the lunar date.

Earthquakes, the birth of the year and medieval remedies

Part Two reads each year from the sign in which it is “born” — a year born in Aries brings many wars and winds — and from omens of earthquake, flood and harvest, while the opening chapters give a discourse on the days of the month and a section on the lunar mansions. Part Three turns to medical remedies and beneficial herbs. The earthquake omens are explored in the Arabic astrology manuscript that predicts earthquakes, and the lunar mansions in the 28 lunar mansions of Arabic magic.