The two earliest Arabic treatises explaining the construction of magic squares date from the 10th century ad. One is found in the Commentary on the Arithmetical Introduction (Kitāb tafsīr al-Arithmāṭīqī) by ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Anṭākī (d. 376 H/ad 987). Only book 3 of the original three books is extant, and that in a single manuscript. This book is divided into three chapters: the first is a collection of arithmetical definitions, statements of propositions, and identities assembled from Greek and Arabic sources; the second is on magic squares; and the third deals with “hidden numbers”, in which a person thinks of a number and another discovers it after operations are performed on it. Curiously, none of these chapters have anything to do with Nicomachus’ Arithmetical Introduction, on which the book is supposed to be a commentary. Reviewed by: Jeffrey A. Oaks Published Online (2022-07-31)Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey A. Oaks Article PDF Link: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/view/39089/29778 Corresponding Author:  Jeffrey A. Oaks,University of IndianapolisE-Mail: oaks@uindy.edu

Original publication: Oaks, Jeffrey A. "Jacques Sesiano, An Ancient Greek Treatise on Magic Squares." Aestimatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science 2 (2): 2022. 99-106. DOI: 10.33137/aestimatio.v2i2.39089. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Aestimatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science. Copyright © the author(s). Aestimatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For details, see creativecommons.org/licenses/.