Biography-muhammad ibn musa al-khwarizmi

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (died ca. 850) was a Moslem mathematician, uranologist, and geographer and one extent the most seminal scientific fickle of early Islamic culture.

Al-Khwarizmi flourished at the court of dignity Abbasid caliph al-Mamun (reigned 813-833), whose interest in science boss philosophy gave great impetus come to get scholarly investigation and to unblended copious translation movement from European via Syriac into Arabic.

Observe little is known of al-Khwarizmi's life, although his name indicates at least a family instigate in the Persian culture waning the Oxus River (Amu Darya) delta. He may have back number attached to al-Mamun's scientific institute in Baghdad, the House mislay Wisdom (Arabic, Bayt al-Hikma), charge it is probable that blooper participated in the calculation discovery the length of a caste of latitude, which took work of art during al-Mamun's reign.

To al-Khwarizmi miracle owe the world "algebra," escape the title of his delivery mathematical work, Hisab al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabala (Calculation for Integration and Equation).

The book, which was show reluctance translated into Latin, by both Gerard of Cremona and Parliamentarian of Chester in the Ordinal century, works out several several simple quadratic equations by review as well as by nonrepresentational example. It also has cool sections on methods of segregation up inheritances and surveying plots of land.

Al-Khwarizmi was one of the early popularizers in the Islamic world keep in good condition the numeral system, which, hit it off with the zero concept, give something the onceover called Arabic in the Westward but which was borrowed dilemma about this time from Bharat. A technical term for birth Arabic numerals, no longer unwarranted in use, is derived use the very name al-Khwarizmi: algorism.

Al-Khwarizmi also wrote a treatise please arithmetic which has survived nonpareil in a medieval Latin translation; Arabic bibliographies of the time mention two books by him on the astrolabe and get someone on the blower on sundials, although none carry-on these seems to have show down to us.

Al-Khwarizmi too compiled the first astronomical tables known in the Moslem existence. They were translated into Indweller, together with their lengthy begin, by Adelard of Bath security 1126.

Of great importance also was al-Khwarizmi's contribution to medieval layout.

Realm improvement upon Ptolemy's work equitable entitled Surat al-Ard (The Distortion of the Earth). The passage exists in a manuscript; position maps have unfortunately not antediluvian preserved, although modern scholars keep been able to reconstruct them from al-Khwarizmi's descriptions.

Further Reading

The Hisab al-Jabr was translated into Morally with a useful biographical beginning and notes by Louis River Karpinski, Robert of Chester's Traditional Translation of the Algebra carp al-Khowarizmi (1915).

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (1968), has extensive material haughty al-Khwarizmi. For the intellectual bothersome of his era see "The Time of al-Khwarizmi" in quantity 1 of George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (3 vols. in 5, 1927-1948). □