Zairja

By combining number values associated with the letters and categories, new paths of insight and thought were created.

According to Ibn Khaldun the most detailed treatment of it is a pseudographical work Za'irajah of the World attributed to as-Sabti, which contains operating instructions in hundreds of lines of verse, beginning: Select a star rise.

He will achieve his purpose And be given their letters in whose arrangement the evidence lies...[2] A manuscript in Rabat recounts Ibn Khaldun's introduction to the machine by Al-Marjānī in 1370 (772 AH), and claims that it was a traditional and ancient science.

[1] When Ibn Khaldun expressed skepticism, the pair asked the instrument how old it was, and the machine told them it was invented by the prophet Idris (identified with the Biblical Enoch).

It has been suggested that Catalan-Majorcan mystic Ramon Llull became familiar with the zairja in his travels and studies of Arab culture, and used it as a prototype for his invention of the Ars Magna.