A treatise on the use of magic squares
- Autores: Jacques Sesiano
- Localización: Suhayl: journal for the history or the exact and natural sciences in Islamic Civilisation, ISSN 1576-9372, Nº. 19, 2022, págs. 89-150
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
The (anonymous) Arabic treatise studied below, a 17th-century copy of a late mediaeval work, deals with the application of magic squares as amulets. With the association of numerical values to Arabic letters, to each word or to each sentence may be attributed a certain sum. Placing this word or sentence in some row of an empty square, the task will be to complete the square so that it would display this quantity as a magic sum. In the first part, the author presents numerical magic squares filled with the first consecutive natural numbers (size 3 × 3 to 10 × 10), the particularity of which is to ease subsequent placing of the required word or sentence in some row and then complete the square. Examples of such constructions are presented in the second part. The third part is devoted to the applications: once the desired magic square is constructed, the reader is taught on which material and at which time it must best be drawn in order to ensure successful use.
