H.P. Lovecraft was not just a horror writer. He was a scholar of sorts, obsessed with the ancient world. He studied history, mythology, and what was then called Orientalism, the Western academic tradition of examining Eastern cultures and religions. His stories were not random nightmares. They were carefully constructed, built on fragments of real knowledge.

One of Lovecraft's primary inspirations was a 13th-century Arabic text called Kitab al-Azif, or "The Wonders of Ancient Egypt." Written by the historian Murtadi ibn al-Khafif, it cataloged the gods, monsters, and magic of pre-Islamic Egypt. The book blended history, mythology, and occult philosophy. Most of the original copies vanished during the Renaissance, when the Church systematically destroyed texts it deemed heretical. But a French translation survived, and it is available today for anyone willing to search for it.

When you read "The Wonders of Ancient Egypt," the parallels to Lovecraft's Necronomicon become clear. Both describe ancient civilizations that possessed knowledge modern humanity has forgotten. Both reference powerful entities that exist outside normal reality. Both warn of rituals that, if performed, could bring these entities into contact with the living world.

But "The Wonders of Ancient Egypt" itself was not the original source. It drew from an even older text, one that may be the true ancestor of all grimoires: the Akbara Zaman, or "The History of Time." This book, believed to date back to ancient Egypt, described celestial beings, pre-flood giants, and creatures that did not belong to the natural world. It detailed rituals for summoning these beings and harnessing their power.

No complete copy of the Akbara Zaman exists today. Only fragments, referenced in later works, hint at its contents. Scholars like Jason Colavito have argued that this lost text is the real Necronomicon, the book that inspired every occult grimoire that followed.

Then there is Shams al-Ma'arif, "The Sun of Knowledge." Written in the 14th century by the Sufi mathematician Ahmad al-Buni, this book is very real, very accessible, and very controversial. It provides detailed instructions for contacting entities from other dimensions. It describes rituals for gaining supernatural knowledge and power. And it has been banned in Islamic countries for centuries.

Unlike the fictional Necronomicon, Shams al-Ma'arif can be found online. Lebanese collectors have digitized copies and made them publicly available. But reading it, let alone practicing its rituals, comes with warnings. Islamic theology holds that God separated the human world from the world of the unseen with an invisible barrier. Humans are not meant to cross it. Those who try, intentionally or not, risk making themselves vulnerable to things that should remain on the other side.

There are forum posts, testimonials from people who claim they tried the rituals in Shams al-Ma'arif. Some say they experienced visions. Others say they felt presences in their homes. A few claim they were driven to violence, either against themselves or others. Whether these accounts are genuine or exaggerations born from suggestibility and fear is unclear. What is clear is that the book has a reputation.

Lovecraft knew about books like these. He read voraciously, collecting fragments of occult lore from dozens of sources. He synthesized them into something new. The Necronomicon was not a copy of any one text. It was a distillation, a fictional grimoire that felt older and more dangerous than the real ones because it was designed specifically to evoke dread.

But the genius of Lovecraft's creation was not just the book itself. It was the backstory. The fictional history. The sense that the Necronomicon had always been there, lurking in the margins of human knowledge, glimpsed but never fully understood.

And that backstory worked so well that people forgot it was fiction. They went looking for the Necronomicon. When they could not find it, some concluded it must be hidden. Others tried to create it, writing their own versions filled with invented rituals and cobbled-together occultism.

The most famous of these fake Necronomicons was published in 1977 by an unknown author using the pseudonym "Simon." It mixed Sumerian mythology, Lovecraftian horror, and ceremonial magic into a single text. It was marketed as a translation of the real Necronomicon, recovered from a secret source. It sold millions of copies. And it convinced a new generation that the book was real.

It was not. But by then, it did not matter. The Necronomicon had taken on a life of its own. It had become a cultural artifact, a symbol of forbidden knowledge, whether it ever existed or not.

The question is no longer whether the Necronomicon is real. The question is why we want it to be.