kabbos
By : Zaher Mousa
Could it be that another world is the source of a book that has been read by many everywhere for decades? A book that spreads in many languages and versions. I talk here about a book we know by the name of “The Sun of Great Knowledge – Shams al-Ma’aref al-Kubra“. It’s a book about magic, one of the most important books in this field throughout history; it contains the secrets of letters and numbers and their hidden values, magical recipes never seen before, in addition to zodiac and other things of magic and astrology.
The book is attributed to an Algerian mystic named Sharaf al-Din or Shehab al-Din al-Boni from the city of Bona, which is today called Annaba; he lived in the middle Ages, specifically in the time of the Crusades. The historical sources about him are scarce, but he is described as an important man in his time, supposedly lived 102 years. He traveled a lot to many countries (Andalusia, Egypt, Jerusalem twice, , Hejaz twice, Iraq), his contemporaries described him as isolationist and ascetic. It is known that he did not get married, and did not want to receive students, which is uncommon for a Muslim cleric and thus increased the strangeness and ambiguity surrounding his personality.
For contemporary sorcerers, they see al-Boni and his book as pioneers in magic and astrology, but the question that puzzles many of them is: from where did al-Boni get all these magical secrets that were not mentioned before in any book? Most were not known in his time, therefore, assumption that the book was dictated to al-Boni by supernatural beings is not surprising, but perhaps is the most logical one. It is enough to say that the narrators mentioned the following about al-Boni : “That the letters talk to him and he know from them their benefits and disadvantages!”.
The book was first printed in 577 pages by al-Maktbah al- Sha’abia of Beirut in 1895. The manuscript was reviewed by a Lebanese mystic named Abdul Qadir al-Husseini al-Trabelsi, who added four chapters at the end of the book, which was more like a comments on the content of the book.
The book was later banned, and it was no longer publicized for decades until new copies appeared, and it was said that the new version have been modified and distorted to become law-abiding. Those who work in magic say that the commercial versions of the book are inferior to the original.
The book is available now in the market .. It is said that you should not read it with your tongue .. Do not pronounce words with your mouth, but read it in your heart so as not to be exposed to the evils of the Otherworld.
Experts believe that just pronounce of the formulas mentioned in the book can lead to the evocation of the Otherworld beings which some may be dangerous. Although the book sets positive intentions for the work of magic, but the methods used are not without heresy and religious blasphemy, there are copies believed to match the origin of the manuscript include works of magic that undermine the sanctity of religion to satisfy evil beings.
A few years ago, Algerians held an international forum, in which one of the sessions discussed the strange personality of al-Boni. Sufi scholar Saïd Jaab Al-Khair spoke about the Boni, saying that there were unpublished works of the author containing ancient secrets about Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Hippocrates and Hermes, as well as the mysteries of the Babylonian astrologers, and that al-Boni mentioned in his writings the story of the discovery of a hiding vault under Akhmim’s temples filled with ancient papyrus related to magic and secrets.
The forum concluded that Nostradamus may have relied on the works of al-Boni, especially that al-Boni had predicted in his life the fall of the Fatimid and Abbasid Caliphate and many other events that came true. Researchers at the forum, which was held in 2010 and attended by famous novelist Rashid Boujdra, noted that the well-known American writer H. P. Lovecraft may have been inspired by the Bonnie character when he wrote his famous novel (Necronomicon), and that the character of the Yemeni magician in the novel (Abdul Alhazred), who died or disappeared in a strange way is only the embodiment of the personality of al-Boni, which is known for his disappearance and appearance and the lack of agreement on the place or time of his death. In addition, the book “al-Azif” that was talked about by Lovecraft in his novel may have been inspired by the “Sun of Knowledge” book
At the end of this article, we can only wonder: was al-Boni a traveling magician who collects magical secrets from multiple cultures? Or was a wizard able to communicate with supernatural beings that guide him to write his mysterious book?.
