Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra
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- John Friend Publishing LLC
More About This Title Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra
English
The only complete and unabridged English translation of the most famous Arabic occult text ever written. Attributed to the 13th-century scholar Ahmad ibn Ali al-Buni, Shams al-Maarif al-Kubra (The Greater Sun of Knowledge, or The Sun of Divine Knowledge) is the foundational encyclopedia of Islamic esoteric science, and for centuries its full form has mostly circulated in Arabic among scholars and practitioners.
This translation preserves every magic square, talismanic seal, divine name invocation, ritual, and lunar mansion table in Arabic script alongside ALA-LC transliteration and faithful English rendering.
Across forty chapters, the text covers the science of the Arabic letters and their numerical values, the properties and operations of each of the ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God, planetary correspondences and celestial timings, the construction and consecration of talismanic squares (awfaq), geomancy and sand divination, the lunar mansions and their spiritual operations, and extensive prayers, invocations, and remembrances for every purpose.
All prayers and invocations are presented in a three-layer format: English translation, ALA-LC transliteration, and the original Arabic script. Over four hundred illustrations, including magic squares, talismanic seals, and geometric diagrams, are reproduced from the original manuscript.
This landmark translation makes seven centuries of closely guarded esoteric knowledge fully accessible to English-speaking researchers, historians of religion, and serious students of the Islamic occult sciences for the first time.
This translation preserves every magic square, talismanic seal, divine name invocation, ritual, and lunar mansion table in Arabic script alongside ALA-LC transliteration and faithful English rendering.
Across forty chapters, the text covers the science of the Arabic letters and their numerical values, the properties and operations of each of the ninety-nine Beautiful Names of God, planetary correspondences and celestial timings, the construction and consecration of talismanic squares (awfaq), geomancy and sand divination, the lunar mansions and their spiritual operations, and extensive prayers, invocations, and remembrances for every purpose.
All prayers and invocations are presented in a three-layer format: English translation, ALA-LC transliteration, and the original Arabic script. Over four hundred illustrations, including magic squares, talismanic seals, and geometric diagrams, are reproduced from the original manuscript.
This landmark translation makes seven centuries of closely guarded esoteric knowledge fully accessible to English-speaking researchers, historians of religion, and serious students of the Islamic occult sciences for the first time.
English
John Friend is a nom de plume. Behind it is an esotericist, occultist, scholar, and translator who has spent years immersed in the Arabic manuscript tradition — reading what most academics catalog but never open, and translating what has never before appeared in any Western language. His work sits at the crossroads of Islamic esotericism, Solomonic magic, and the living tradition of ʿilm al-ḥurūf (the science of letters). He translates not as an outsider looking in, but as a student of the tradition itself.
