The Maghribi cum Egyptian Sufi Ahmad al-Buni (d. ca. 622/1225) has long been regarded as one the most important writers on ‘magic’ from the medieval Islamicate world, especially in association with a large miscellany on the occult sciences – a work of dubious origins – entitled Shams al-ma’arif al-kubra. Despite his fame/infamy, the details of al-Buni's life have long remained mysterious. This paper examines the life of al-Buni on the basis of numerous sources which have not previously been adduced by scholars of al-Buni, including numerous clues to his life found in the paratexts (colophons, audition certificates, patronage statements, etc.) of some early manuscripts of Bunian works, comments al-Buni makes about his own life in works of his which previous scholarship has all but entirely ignored, and an unpublished version of a biographical entry on al-Buni by the famous Mamluk-era historian Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi (d. 845/1442). In addition to this new biographical information, the paper examines the broad range of works attributed to al-Buni in medieval manuscripts, focusing on those which survive in multiple copies to suggest that al-Buni was a far more diverse and complex figure than previous scholarship has allowed, one whose impact went far beyond the essentially trivial position to which he has often been assigned by modern scholars. This paper is one product of an extensive survey of the vast and unwieldy corpus of manuscripts of works attributed to al-Buni, and a piece of a larger effort to re-evaluate his place within the history of Sufism and of Islamic thought.