Creating a 78 card Mamluk deck

blue_fusion

http://www.studiesincomparativereli..._Tree_Symbol_in_Islam-by_Noble_Ross_Reat.aspx

The article above expounds more on the 'trees" theme and symbolism in Islam. In my previous post which had a quote on trees in Islam, looking at the four trees, on an immediate, superficial level, one can associate the world tree with the world, the garden of eden tree with the lovers, and the infernal tree with the devil. There's also probably a number of Islamic depictions and descriptions of the celestial bodies which may be useful for the tarot's 'celestial' cards (sun, moon, star) out there. So there's potential to look for major arcana equivalents, if one wants to go in that direction.

Just really throwing out ideas here. Hope they help. :)
 

blue_fusion

As an aside, and just a bit of trivia, European star forts look curiously like Islamic geometric art, at least superficially. :D
 

trzes

As an aside, and just a bit of trivia, European star forts look curiously like Islamic geometric art, at least superficially. :D

Uh-oh, so the muslims must have undercut our military defenses centuries ago! :joke:
 

blue_fusion

Some more digging around reveals that the Queen of Sheba (in Islamic tradition) is associated with the Sun. Interesting gender reversal. Tolkienesque. :D
 

blue_fusion

Another observation (though I dunno how this would translate to aniconistic imagery): the vibe of the one man-two women depiction in the Lovers card of decks like the Marseille changes when one considers Islamic marital traditions.
 

variantventures

I've given this subject some thought. It would be fairly simple, in concept, to make a 78 card Tarot deck done in an Islamic style. If you are using the Mamluk cards from the Topkapi collection as your model then you are pretty much locked in to the Sunni prohibition on depicting human, and animal, forms and would need to come up with other ways to visually represent the ideas conveyed by the trumps. Balanced scales, a chariot, and etc...

Another tack to take would be to pay attention to the verses that appear at the top of the Topkapi cards. Picking verses from the Koran which represent the core concept of each trump and then using decorative calligraphy to make that verse fill most of the card (plus, of course, the border design) would be an excellent way to create a set of trumps but, ultimately, the deck would be very inaccessible to anyone who isn't an Arabic reader.

Lastly you could abandon the Topkapi decks as your source and create a set in a Persian style. The Shi'a branch of Islam interprets the prohibition on depicting human figures differently (i.e. they largely ignore it) and there is a wealth of Persian art to choose from in creating a deck.
 

blue_fusion

Another thing that's interesting to note is the fact that there are examples of Mamluk art which allow depictions of human and animal figures. Personally, though, if I were to create my own version of the deck, I'll still be sticking to foliage and geometry (and inanimate objects), like in the original deck (and maybe remove the verses altogether).
 

trzes

Recently I managed to obtain a copy of L. A. Mayers book on Mamluk cards, a re-published version of his 1931 article that shows images of almost all known cards of the Topkapi deck of Mamluk cards.

It contains photos of several cards that have not been included in Jan Bauwens' faksilime of the Mamluk cards and that seem to be unknown to most people. The weird thing is that some of them appear to be more court cards making it plausible that the original deck (not containing blue patches nor random cards from other decks) would have had four court cards per suit instead of three.

Including these images we find a total of for court cards for the polo sticks (see attached image) as well as for the coins.

I have put up a website about Mamluk cards where I discuss this issue in some length. As a consequence it seems that for a 78 card version of mamluk card the issue of inventing queens has vanished.
 

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blue_fusion

That's good news! Now for "contextualizing" the new courts. :D