Creating a 78 card Mamluk deck

blue_fusion

If there was any chance to make my cards look like a Lynyrd Narciso deck I wouldn't hesitate :D But no way ...

Thanks for mentioning MPC. Wow, they even offer hexagonal cards.

And I second Islamic iconography. It would definitely be worth digging into it. I already have a couple of books about the mathematical foundation of arabic patterns (maybe only suitable for my formalistic take on the whole thing of course).

Ha! And I already started reading English and German translations of the Mystic Rubayat too, in search of possible texts for the blue patches on the cards. But after all in my deck at least there won't be any blue patches.

I think MPC charges around $50 additional for odd dimensions (I got that from the creator of the Mutations deck) - this isn't per deck, I think, but covers the entire order of decks - I think it's to pay for the cusyom die-cut blade for the cards (I had a similar experience with the Marcelino. The diecut charges were quite a bit more than that!).
 

trzes

Regarding the idea of extending the mamluk cards to a full 78 cards deck: Would it make any sense to simply use one arabic letter per major arcana, nicely done and caligraphically refined? The arabic and the Hebrew alphabet should be similar enough, and doesn't the Golden Dawn / Tree of Life system offer a correspondence between majors and hebrew letters? Unfortunately I am rather ignorant about all this...

Any opinions?

(Again there seem to be enough ideas to find more solutions than possible decks being made :))
 

blue_fusion

Hmmmm. I guess that could work, though some part of me finds it... lacking. Like, sure, there are systems of associations between the majors and the Hebrew alphabet, but even in these cases, the letters were added to the image afterwards - there was already an existing archetype/image for the letter to be added to. I am not sure I'm explaining myself quite well! Lol

I have thought of several ways to attack the problem, so to speak. One would be to find symbolic equivalents of each of the majors' titles in Islamic Iconography (e. g. What Islamic object/symbol or arrangement of objects/symbols best represents the Hermit).

The second would be to find a pre-existing system within Islamic Iconography/philosophy/history, which would best match the majors, or their purpose - not necessarily approximating their Western equivalents (e. g. Perhaps there would be a different set of virtues, which would be more in line with Islamic culture, compared to the tarot's Strength, Justice and Temperance, etc).

There are still a couple of sets in my notes and brewing in my head - will also post them here,but I need tk organize them better. :D
 

earthair

(Again there seem to be enough ideas to find more solutions than possible decks being made :))

Why let this stop us :joke: Let's just glom all the solutions together in one 'all singing all dancing' UBERdeck.

Yes, taste and decency, structure and organisation are likely to go out of the window if I'm not careful :rolleyes:
 

blue_fusion

Regarding the idea of extending the mamluk cards to a full 78 cards deck: Would it make any sense to simply use one arabic letter per major arcana, nicely done and caligraphically refined? The arabic and the Hebrew alphabet should be similar enough, and doesn't the Golden Dawn / Tree of Life system offer a correspondence between majors and hebrew letters? Unfortunately I am rather ignorant about all this...

Any opinions?

(Again there seem to be enough ideas to find more solutions than possible decks being made :))

I've given this idea a bit more thought and did a bit of digging around the internet. I've found that some of the letters actually are associated with certain symbols or themes. For example, from Wikipedia's article on the letter/character nun (ن):

"Nun is believed to be derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake, nachash begins with a Nun and snake in Aramaic is nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of fish in water as its origin (in Arabic, nūn means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was named nūn "fish", but the glyph has been suggested to descend from a hypothetical Proto-Canaanite naḥš "snake", based on the name in Ethiopic, ultimately from a hieroglyph representing a snake, (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets). Naḥš in modern Arabic literally means "bad luck". The cognate letter in Ge'ez and descended Semitic languages of Ethiopia is nehas, which also means "brass".

The implications of this are... interesting. :D it could mean a very different set of symbols and meanings for the "majors" of this deck.

There is also potential for symbols to use in the "majors" in information such as this:

"According to Noble Ross Reat (1975), tree symbol is an equivalent symbol of the world in Islam as it were with other religion. Most religion in the world viewed the tree symbol as a tree that hold much power within it. The most common tree symbol known is the Tree of Life that represent the beginning of all life in this world.

There are several types of tree that can be related to the Islamic world which have a certain story and value within it. The most popular tree is The Shajarat Al-Tuba, the “Tree of Bliss” the Islamic world tree. The Tree of Bliss is the symbol of Islamic world tree but it does not appear in name or description in the Quran. In the Quran, there are four type of tree that are mentioned as the distinct supernatural tree and that is the Infernal Tree (Zaqqum), the Lote Tree of the Uttermost Boundary (Sidrat-Al-Muntaha), the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden and the Lamp Verse (the olive neither of the east nor west) (Reat, 1975)
"

from this site: http://www.academia.edu/6434120/Islamic_Symbolism

Some more food for thought to, well, think on. :)
 

blue_fusion

Also, personally, I prefer avoiding depicting people and perhaps even animals in the new cards as I think this would be consistent with the aniconistic outlook portrayed in the art of the original Mamluk cards.
 

The Happy Squirrel

I think that is very respectful :) Since from what I understand Islam doesn't allow the depiction of humans (and animals? Not sure) by humans , I think.
 

trzes

I think that is very respectful :) Since from what I understand Islam doesn't allow the depiction of humans (and animals? Not sure) by humans , I think.

Over large periods of time it was at least good practice not to depict humans, not sure whether this was a strict law. But I think that it was mainly an issue for religious art. The mamluk cards seem to have no direct links to religion or reigious symbols though as far as I know. I bet that some people must have regarded it as a heresy anyway to spend artistic skills on something as wicked as playing cards, even if they were for decorative purposes only. Like with the early tarot decks. The catholic church won't have been pleased to see a female pope in the Visconti decks for example.

So I do think we have a bit more freedom than what the canonical setup of Islamic art might tells us when we try to guess what the creators of the Mamluk cards would have done had they been told to extend their deck to a tarot. Still I am sure it simply wouldn't have occured to them to use anything but abstract symbols and geometrical patterns in their art.

This is after all a point against trying to get inspiration from modern abstract tarot decks, as they are mainly simplified versions of the well known scenes with many humans in them.

At the moment Ly's idea seems the most promising to me: to recreate a similar system of 22 general symbols from scratch, using what can be found in the iconography and symbolism of Islamic art without thinking too closely of the tarot's major arcana.
 

trzes

Why let this stop us :joke: Let's just glom all the solutions together in one 'all singing all dancing' UBERdeck.

Yes, taste and decency, structure and organisation are likely to go out of the window if I'm not careful :rolleyes:

Don't stop! To hell with structure and decency :D I mean, seriously, an unconventional "mix it all together" approach might be a liberating variation.

I almost start feeling a bit sad about having limited myself to stay as close to the original deck and the underlying mindset as possible with my version of a mamluk deck, he he
 

blue_fusion

Don't stop! To hell with structure and decency :D I mean, seriously, an unconventional "mix it all together" approach might be a liberating variation.

I almost start feeling a bit sad about having limited myself to stay as close to the original deck and the underlying mindset as possible with my version of a mamluk deck, he he

Well, you can always do a second or even third version of it. ;)