The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c11.s1.24

c11.s1.24

Symbolical use of arrows. — The pagan Arabs used arrows in a game of chance, Hughes, “Dict. of Islam,” p. 309, under *Al maisir*, الميسر. Divining by arrows was forbidden by Muḥammad, see Sale’s “Preliminary Discourse”, section v, and the Qurān, v, where the word used is zalmun (singular) azlāma (plural), an unfeathered, unpointed arrow. The mode of procedure is set out in E. W. Lane’s Lexicon, p. 1247, under zalamun, “he cut off”, section viii. The practice, however, survived in spite of the prohibition; and in 1544 we find Humāyūn getting into trouble with Shāh Tahmāsp on this account. He marked twelve of his best arrows with his own, and eleven inferior ones with Tahmāsp’s name—Erskine, “Baber and Humāyūn,” ii, 289.