Other Theories
According to authors Robert Lomas and Christopher Knight, Hiram Abiff would have been Egyptian king Seqenenre Tao II, who met an extremely similar death. This idea is dismissed by most Masonic scholars.
In his book The Sufis, the Afghan scholar Idries Shah suggested that Dhul-Nun al-Misri might have been the origin of the character Hiram Abiff in the Freemasonic Master Mason ritual. The link, he believes, was through the Sufi sect Al-Banna ("The Builders") who built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. This fraternity could have influenced some early masonic guilds which borrowed heavily from the Oriental architecture in the creation of the Gothic style.
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