Al-Khwarizmi
- Lived
- c. 780 - 850 CE
- Read next
- Meaning of the name Al-Khwarizmi
Who was Al-Khwarizmi? The Persian mathematician of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad who wrote the founding text of algebra, systematized Indian numerals for Islamic and later European use, and whose Latinized name gave us the word algorithm.
The Persian mathematician of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad who wrote the founding text of algebra, systematized Indian numerals for Islamic and later European use, and whose Latinized name gave us the word algorithm.
Life
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi came from Khwarezm, in the Aral Sea region, and settled in Baghdad during the reign of the Caliph al-Mamun (r. 813-833). He worked at the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma), the great translation and research institution al-Mamun founded to gather and translate Greek, Persian, and Indian scientific texts into Arabic.
He wrote Kitab al-Mukhtasar fi Hisab al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing), around 830 CE. The word al-jabr (completion) in the title gave us the word algebra in Latin.
The book laid out the methods of solving linear and quadratic equations. It taught reduction and cancellation as universal techniques. It gave the world the standard method still taught in schools today.
His book on the use of Indian (Hindu-Arabic) numerals, translated into Latin as Algoritmi de numero Indorum, introduced the decimal system and the digit zero to medieval Europe. His Latinized name, Algoritmi, gave us the word algorithm.
He also worked on astronomy and geography. He revised the Almagest of Ptolemy for the Islamic world and produced a book on the geography of the inhabited world that improved on Ptolemy's coordinates for hundreds of cities.
Stories
Each story is drawn from the classical Islamic sources.