There is no known historical evidence that tarot was used for fortune telling in the Ottoman Empire. Tarot was born in fifteenth-century northern Italy as a card game and was only used for divination from the late eighteenth century, in France. Playing cards circulated in Ottoman lands, but fortune telling relied on coffee cups, books of omens and yildizname.
This article treats tarot as entertainment and a subject of cultural history; the cards are not a substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
Where and when did tarot first appear?
The oldest known tarot decks were made in the mid-fifteenth century at the courts of northern Italian cities such as Milan and Ferrara. They were called "carte da trionfi", triumph cards, and they were luxury objects, hand-painted and gilded. The partly surviving Visconti-Sforza decks are the most famous examples, and they carry the coats of arms and fashions of the noble families who commissioned them.
Their real purpose was a game. A standard four-suit deck was extended with special picture cards that beat all the others, and those trumps are what we now call the Major Arcana. The name "tarocchi" became common in the early sixteenth century. The game spread to France and Switzerland, and the Marseille tarot pattern printed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became one of the standard looks of tarot. Throughout this period there is no strong evidence of the cards being used for divination; for several centuries tarot remained mainly a game played at the table, and it is still played in parts of France, Italy and central Europe today.
How did playing cards reach Europe?
The story of tarot depends on the older story of playing cards. They appear suddenly in European records in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and many historians believe they arrived through the eastern Mediterranean, especially from the Mamluk world that ruled Egypt and Syria.
The strongest support for this view is a Mamluk-era deck preserved at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. It has four suits: cups, coins, swords and polo sticks. The resemblance to the cups, coins, swords and batons of Italian decks is striking; in a Europe that did not play polo, the polo stick may simply have become a staff. This link gives the idea that tarot "came from the East" a genuine historical core. But what travelled was a game deck, not a fortune-telling deck. The picture trumps, the cards that make tarot tarot, were added in Italy. The connection runs through the shape and suits of the cards, not through any tradition of interpretation, and keeping that distinction in mind explains where many confused stories about tarot begin.
Were card games known in the Ottoman world?
Yes. Playing cards are known to have circulated in Ottoman lands, and Turkish still calls them "iskambil". Drawing a precise picture is harder: how widespread card games were, which decks were used and in which circles they were played are not well documented, and the subject has been studied far less than coffee or backgammon. Given the close trade ties between port cities and European merchants, cards plausibly arrived that way too, but the details remain open to research.
What we can say is this: the available sources contain no record of tarot decks being used for fortune telling in the Ottoman Empire. Tarot itself was not a common divination tool in Europe until the late eighteenth century, so it would not be expected for the Ottomans to have adopted a tarot fortune-telling tradition earlier. Stories of "tarot readings at the Ottoman palace" are, as far as we know today, tales without a source.
What kinds of fortune telling were common in the Ottoman Empire?
Ottoman fortune telling was rich, but it grew from its own tools rather than from tarot:
- Coffee cup reading: coffee reached Istanbul in the sixteenth century, and reading the grounds became an everyday social ritual. Today's coffee cup reading continues that heritage.
- Falnames: books of omens consulted by opening a page, some lavishly illustrated in the early seventeenth century.
- Yildizname: an interpretive tradition based on the stars and on the numerical values of letters in a person's name.
- Dream books: guides explaining the objects and events seen in dreams.
What these traditions share is that interpretation happens through a book, a calculation or a conversation. The sequence of picture cards that defines tarot had no counterpart in this world, and there was no gap for it to fill.
Where did the idea of an ancient Egyptian tarot come from?
The claim that tarot preserves thousands of years of eastern or Egyptian wisdom was launched in 1781 by the French writer Antoine Court de Gébelin, who argued that the cards hid the secret knowledge of Egyptian priests. Hieroglyphs had not yet been deciphered, and the claim rested on no document. Shortly afterwards a writer using the name Etteilla published one of the first tarot decks designed specifically for divination.
In the nineteenth century Éliphas Lévi linked the 22 Major Arcana to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and at the end of that century the Golden Dawn circle in England built these ideas into a system. The notion of an exotic origin is a product of these romantic readings. Claims such as "tarot passed from the Ottomans to Europe" or "the Ottomans had a secret tarot tradition" usually circulate as an extension of the same romantic frame.
Which claims are myths and which are facts?
| Claim | Status | In short |
|---|---|---|
| Tarot comes from Egypt | Myth | Proposed in the eighteenth century, no evidence |
| Tarot was born in Italy | Fact | The oldest decks are fifteenth-century northern Italian |
| Playing cards came from the East | Widely accepted | Mamluk decks offer a strong link |
| Ottomans read tarot for fortunes | No evidence | No such practice appears in the sources |
| The Ottomans had a fortune-telling culture | Fact | Coffee reading, falnames and yildizname were common |
"No evidence" does not mean something certainly never happened; it means it does not appear in the sources known so far.
Why does this history matter when you read tarot today?
Knowing the real history of tarot does not spoil the cards. It lets you use them more consciously. The deck grew from a game into a tool for reflection, enriched with symbolism over centuries, and that use is meaningful without an imaginary ancient origin. Separating documented history from romantic legend is also more respectful to both tarot and the Ottoman traditions that stand on their own. When a source speaks confidently about "Ottoman tarot", asking which document it relies on is always a good start. For the general name of card divination, see cartomancy, and to explore the cards and spreads, visit the tarot page.
