Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world

This is a sub-article to Islamic science and mathematics.

Islamic mathematics is the profession of Muslim Mathematicians. It is the study of mathematics within the bounds of Islam. Other Mathematic studies within religious bounds include the Pythagoreans.

Ancient Greek influence

Ancient Greek mathematics had an important role in the development of early Islamic mathematics, especially works such as Euclid's classic geometry, and it is thought that they contributed to the era of Islamic scientific innovation that lasted until the 14th century. Many ancient Greek books are only known because they were transcribed by Islamic scholars.

Indian influence

Indian mathematics and astronomy had an important role in the evolution of Islamic mathematics, especially the works of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta. The most important contribution from India was the decimal place-value Hindu-Arabic numeral system, along with important concepts of algebra and trigonometry.

Islamic mathematicians

Spherical trigonometry was largely developed by Muslims, and systematized (along with plane trigonometry) by Persian Shi'a mathematician Nasir al-Din Tusi (Nasireddin) in the 13th century.

An important figure of the Islamic mathematics was Al-Khwarizmi, the ninth century Persian astronomer of the caliph of Baghdad. He wrote several important books and it is today known for introducing the place-value decimal system, which we use today. The system was developed in India in the 6th century, but it was known to Europeans only in the 13th century, from a Latin translation of Al-Khwarizmi. European Medieval mathematical works used the phrase "dixit Algorismi" ("so says Al-Khwarizmi") when they used the decimal system; from this is derived the word "algorithm". Also the word Algebra is derived from one of his works, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, which dealt with equations, polynomials, etc - specifically it explained how to reveal unknown quantities in equations by executing balancing procedures which preserve the equality. Although some claim that Al-Khwarizmi's personal religion was Zoroastrianism, nevertheless his work has always been and remains in the mainstream of Islamic intellectual history.

Further development of algebra was by Abu Bakr al-Karaji in his treatise al-Fakhri, where he extends the methodology to incorporate integral powers and integral roots of unknown quantities.

Other notable Islamic mathematicians are al-Samawal, Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi, Jamshid al-Kashi, Thabit ibn Qurra, Abu Kamil, and Abu Sahl al-Kuhi.

Further reading

• Berggren, J. L. Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam. Springer-Verlag: 1986.
• Burton, David M. The History of Mathematics: An Introduction. McGraw Hill: 1997.
• Rashed, Roshdi. The Development of Arabic Mathematics: Between Arithmetic and Algebra. Transl. by A. F. W. Armstrong. Kluwer Academic Publishers: 1994.

See also

• Muslim scientists

External links

• History of Trigonometry
• http://www.math.uu.nl/people/hogend/Islamath.html
• http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/introduction/woi_knowledge.html#28
• "Arabic mathematics : forgotten brilliance?"