Jafr is a political-eschatological divinatory discourse originally associated with the Shīʿī Imāms that, over time, came to refer to a range of divinatory practices and millenarian discourses and became nearly synonymous with the science of letters (ʿilm al-ḥurūf). 1. Jafr in early Shīʿī sources In early Shīʿī sources, a jafr is a text or collection of texts that forms an important basis of the esoteric knowledge possessed by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), cousin and son-in-law of Muḥammad, and the later Imāms, particularly regarding