AL-BŪNĪ AND THE SECRET TRADITION: Sufism, Magic, and the Occult Sciences of Medieval Islam - Softcover

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"AL-BŪNĪ AND THE SECRET TRADITION"

"Sufism, Magic, and the Occult Sciences of Medieval Islam"

Aḥmad al-Būnī remains one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in the history of Islamic esotericism. Remembered above all through the fame of "Shams al-Maʿārif", his name became associated with sacred letters, Divine Names, numerical squares, talismans, astrology, spiritual beings, and forms of knowledge that later generations would classify as occult. Yet the historical thinker who lived in the medieval Islamic world was far more complex than the legendary magician created by popular tradition.
This study reconstructs al-Būnī within the religious and intellectual culture of the Maghreb, Ifrīqiya, Egypt, and the Hijaz. It examines the Sufi environments in which he was formed, his connection with ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Mahdawī, the indirect intellectual proximity linking his world to Ibn ʿArabī, and the networks of travel, pilgrimage, teaching, and manuscript transmission that connected western and eastern Islam.
Particular attention is devoted to the science of letters, ʿilm al-ḥurūf, and to the conviction that Arabic letters could possess numerical, cosmological, and spiritual significance. The Divine Names of Allah are studied within their Qurʾanic and theological foundations before the analysis moves toward abjad calculation, magic squares, celestial correspondences, planetary timing, talismanic construction, angels, jinn, rūḥāniyyāt, and the controversial use of spiritual intermediaries.
The book also addresses one of the central historical problems surrounding al-Būnī: determining what he actually wrote. Medieval manuscripts were copied, expanded, reorganized, combined, and transmitted under prestigious names. "Shams al-Maʿārif al-Kubrā" therefore cannot simply be treated as a single work preserved unchanged from the thirteenth century. The development of the Bunian corpus is examined through manuscript culture, later compilations, printing, and the gradual transformation of al-Būnī into the presumed author of an immense esoteric tradition.
Religious legitimacy remains a major theme throughout the volume. Qurʾanic condemnations of siḥr, legal discussions of amulets and ruqya, theological debates about astral causation, Sufi concepts of karāmāt, and questions concerning the unseen are placed beside the operative ambitions found in Bunian literature. The result is a historically nuanced picture in which devotion, cosmology, sacred language, natural philosophy, and contested magical practices could intersect without belonging automatically to the same category.
The final sections follow the transmission of al-Būnī's reputation through North Africa, Egypt, the Ottoman world, West Africa, the Indian Ocean networks, modern printing, reformist criticism, Western occultism, and contemporary internet mythology. Behind the modern legend of a dangerous "book of jinn" emerges a sophisticated medieval intellectual project concerned with the hidden relations among revelation, language, number, creation, and spiritual efficacy.

About the Author

Roberto Minichini is an Italian writer, essayist, poet, astrologer, and independent scholar of religious and esoteric traditions. Born in Mainz, Germany, in 1973 to an Italian father and a Croatian mother, he writes in English, Italian, and German. His work explores comparative religion, mysticism, philosophy, astrology, Islamic thought, Western esotericism, Russian culture, and the history of ideas, with particular attention to the interaction between doctrine, historical context, and the transmission of spiritual and initiatory traditions.

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