History
Magic squares were known to Chinese mathematicians as early as 650 BCE, and to Arab mathematicians possibly as early as the 7th century CE, when the Arabs conquered northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent and learned Indian mathematics and astronomy, including other aspects of combinatorial mathematics. The first magic squares of order 5 and 6 appear in an encyclopedia from Baghdad circa 983 CE, the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (Rasa'il Ihkwan al-Safa); simpler magic squares were known to several earlier Arab mathematicians. Some of these squares were later used in conjunction with magic letters, as in (Shams Al-ma'arif), to assist Arab illusionists and magicians.
Read more about this topic: Simple Magic Square
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