About Muhiuddin Abu’l Abbas Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Yusuf al-Buni (d. 622 AH / 1225 CE)
The following summary drew upon various sources, for example:
A cursory footnote about Buni in a translation of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah
Precious little is known about the life of Ahmad al-Buni. He was an Arab (apparently Egyptian) Sufi of the 7th century AH, well known as a cabbalistic writer, who also wrote on mathematics, Ilm al-Hikmah (Knowledge of the Wisdom), Ilm al-Simiyah (Study of the Divine Names), and Ruhaniyat (Spirituality). Such terms were prefered by their advocates to Sihr (Sorcery).
Buni lived in the Middle East and studied under some of the most famed Sufi Masters. A printed edition of Buni's Shams al-Ma'arif (Cairo, 1921), apparently a reproduction of the edition of 1874, seems to refer to later dates for his death such as 670 AH. Buni’s mystical pedigree would suggest a late 7th century AH / 13th century CE date for him. However, there is a MS of one of his works in Berlin, No. 4126, dated 669. Thus, he probably lived c. 1200 CE.
He left a bibliography of his writings. Unfortunately, very few of them have survived. He states in his work Manba’ Usul al-Hikmah (Source of the Essentials of Wisdom) that he acquired his knowledge of the esoteric properities of the letters through the following retrograde chain of teachers:
Abu Abdillah Shams al-Din al-Asfahani
Jalal al-Din Abdullah al-Bistami
Shaykh al-Sarajani
Qasim al-Sarajani
Abdullah al-Babani
Asil al-Din al-Shirazi
Abu al-Najib al-Suhrawardi (founder of the Suhrawardiyya school of Sufism, not the Ishraqi school founded by his contemporary, Shihab ud-Din Suhrawardi)
Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali al-Tusi (the famous scholar, often simply called Ghazali or Algazel)
Ahmad al-Aswad
Hamad al-Dinuri
Al-Junayd al-Baghdadi
Sari al-Din al-Saqati
Ma’ruf al-Karkhi
Dawud al-Jili
Habib al-Ajami
Hasan al-Basri.
Buni states in the same work that he acquired his knowledge of magical squares through the following retrograde chain of teachers:
Siraj al-Din al-Hanafi
Shihab al-Din al-Muqaddasi
Shams al-Din al-Farisi
Shihab al-Din al-Hamadani
Qutb al-Din al-Diya’i
Muhyiddin ibn Arabi
Abu’l Abbas Ahmad ibn al-Turizi
Abu Abdullah al-Qurashi
Abu Madin al-Andalusi.
Buni states that he acquired additional knowledge about the esoteric art of letters and the magical squares through the following retrograde chain of teachers:
Mohammad 'Izz al-Din ibn Jam’a
Mohammad al-Sirani
Shihab al-Din al-Hamadani
Qutb al-Din al-Dhiya’i
Muhyiddin ibn Arabi.
Buni states that he acquired his occult knowledge through the following retrograde chain of teachers:
Abu’l Abbas Ahmad ibn Maymun al-Qastalani
Abu Abdullah Muhammad al-Qurashi
Abu Madin Shu'ayb ibn Hasan al-Ansari al-Andalusi
Abu Ayyub ibn Abi Sa'id al-Sanhaji al-Armuzi
Abi Muhammad ibn Nur
Abu al-Fadhl Abdullah ibn Bashr
Abu Bashr al-Hasan al-Jujari
Al-Saqati
Dawud al-Ta’i
Habib al-Ajami
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Sirin
Malik ibn Anas.
Buni also made regular mention of Plato, Aristotle, Hermes, Alexander the Great, and obscure names of Chaldæan magicians. In one of his works, he recounted a story of his discovery of a cache of manuscripts buried under the pyramids, that included a work of Hermetic thinkers. His works on traditional healing remain a point of reference among Yoruba Muslim healers in Nigeria and other areas of the Muslim world.
For information on his writings, see Ullmann, M. - Die Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Abteilung I, Ergänzungsband VI, Abschnitt 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), pp. 390-1; Brockelmann, C. - Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, 1st edition, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1889-1936). Second edition, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1943-49) [Page references will be to those of the first edition, with the 2nd edition page numbers given in parentheses], vol. 1, pp 497-8 (655-6); Brockelmann, C. - Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Supplement, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1937-1942), vol. 1, p. 910; and Maddison, F. and Savage-Smith, E. - Science, Tools & Magic [Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, 12] (Oxford: Oxford University Press and London: Azimuth Edition, 1997), pp. 64-9.
Buni authored approximately 40 texts on occultism. Among his most famous, besides the Shams al-Ma’arif and Manba’ Usul al-Hikmah, there are:
● Sharh Ism Allah al-a'zam fi al-Ruhani, printed in 1357 AH
● Kabs al-iktida, kept in Durham University Library
Note: Our author is not to be confused with Ahmad ibn Qasim ibn Muhammad Sasi al-Buni al-Tamimi (1003/1594 - 1103/1691), who was born in Buna in North Africa, and was also a writer on occult and magical practices (several of his treatises are preserved today). For his writings and what little is known of his life, see Brockelmann, C. - Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Supplement, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1937-1942), vol. 2, p. 715.