Magic squares. Their history and construction from ancient times to AD 1600 (Q2420373)

This is certainly a definitive comprehensive treatise on the history of magic squares from their known beginnings to 1600. There is a wealth of material, containing methods of construction as well as individual magic squares, including bordered and pandiagonal magic squares, that is astonishing. Their history starts with the Greeks, for we know that Thābit ibn Qurra (836--901) translated a Greek work on magic squares, but no Greek language text prior to that of the Byzantine work of Manuel Moschopoulos (ca. 1300) is extant. Thābit's translation is followed by a book on magic squares by the Persian mathematician Abū'l-Wafā' Būzjānī (940--997/8), then by one by Ibn al-Haytham, lost, but to which later authors refer, followed by several other Persian authors. Magic squares arrive to the Latin West through the work of Moschopoulos and later trough the translation of magic texts which associate the magic squares with the seven ``planets'' known at the time in the geocentric system (including the Sun and the Moon), with no Arabic text describing methods of construction of magic squares being translated into Latin. The German theologian and mathematician Michael Stifel (1487--1567) provided instructions for constructing bordered squares of all orders, without naming his sources or taking credit for the discovery of his methods. The last major Arabic text of the period is the comprehensive treatise \textit{Rising of the illumination for arranging magic squares}, written around 1600 by the Egyptian Muḥammad Shabrāmallisī.