Sharaf al-Din, Shihab al-Din, or Muḥyi al-Din Abu al-Abbas Aḥmad ibn Ali ibn Yusuf al-Qurashi al-Sufi, better known as Aḥmad al-Būnī al-Malki (Arabic: أحمد البوني المالكي, d. 1225), was a medieval mathematician and Islamic philosopher and a well-known Sufi. Very little is known about him. His writings deal with 'Ilm al-huruf (Arabic: علم الحروف, the esoteric value of letters) and topics relating to mathematics, siḥr "sorcery", and spirituality.[1][2] Born in Buna in the Almohad Caliphate (now Annaba, Algeria), al-Buni lived in Ayyubid Egypt and learned from many eminent Sufi masters of his time.[3] A contemporary of ibn Arabi,[4] he is best known for writing one of the most important books of his era; the Shams al-Ma'arif, a book that is still regarded as the foremost occult text on talismans and divination.
Instead of sihr (sorcery), this kind of magic was called Ilm al-Hikmah (Knowledge of the Wisdom), Ilm al-simiyah (Study of the Divine Names) and Ruhaniyat (Spirituality). Most of the so-called mujarrabât ("time-tested methods") books on sorcery in the Muslim world are simplified excerpts from the Shams al-Ma'arif.[5] The book remains the seminal work on Theurgy and esoteric arts to this day.
In c. 1200, Ahmad al-Buni showed how to construct magic squares using a simple bordering technique, but he may not have discovered the method himself. Al-Buni wrote about Latin squares and constructed, for example, 4 x 4 Latin squares using letters from one of the 99 names of God. His works on traditional healing remain a point of reference among Yoruba Muslim healers in Nigeria and other areas of the Muslim world.[6]
His work is said to have influenced the Hurufis and the New Lettrist International.[citation needed] Denis MacEoin, in a 1985 article in Studia Iranica, said that al-Buni may also have indirectly influenced the Twelver Shi'i radical movement known as Bábism. MacEoin said that Bābis made widespread use of talismans and magical letters.[7]
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