Epistle of Extraction about Sultan Ahmed b. Muhammed

The effort to interpret the sacred texts according to the letter systems such as abjad and jafr in order to attain information about the invisible world dates back to very old times. This case is not only peculiar to the texts written in Arabic but also to different alphabets. In this system, each letter has a numeric value. Adding up the numerical values of the letters in a sentence, a chronogram is reached. İstihrâc Risâlesi (Epistle of Extraction) about Sultan Ahmed b. Muhammed is a work of this kind. The writer of the book, Derviş Ali El-Nakşibendî Eş-Şehîr bi-İncili, tried to make predictions about some events happened during the reign of Sultan Ahmed III by extracting verses from the Quran and Psalm. It is clearly seen that the writer was trying to attribute sacredness to Sultan Ahmed III. Keywords: Jafr, Abjad, Istihrâc (Extracting), Chronogram, Sultan Ahmed III