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Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa Al- Khwarzami – Father of Algebra
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| Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Musa al Khwarizmi |
Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Musa Al- Khwarzami one of the most important multi talented personality in the history of Moorish Cavaliers was a great mathematician, Astrologer, Historian, Scholar , born in the 780 AD in a small town Khwarzm a small town in the great Persian Empire. Being a great Muslim research scholar, and scientist of his time he has served as a teacher in the great institutes of his times like the house of wisdom where he transformed the old Greek and Latin concepts of old knowledge in to Arabic. During his stay in Baghdad, he performed all his research work there during 813 to 833. He had made major contributions in the following fields.
1. Algebra
Al-Khwarizmi is regarded as the most famous and able mathematician I the history of that subject. He wrote a book named a Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-l-muqabl ) The book has played a key role in modern Algebraic concepts and was the presuccessor of Arabic algebra. The book is translated in many international languages like Latin, Greek and English. The book is based on solving problems regarding the polynomials, quadratic equations. The introduction of Indian numeral system towards the Middle East and Western world was his great contribution to mathematics and he gave more than 800 numerals later termed as logarithms.
2. Astronomy
Being a famous astrologer of his time Al-Khwarizmi has made remarkable contributions in this field. He wrote astronomical literature with the name of Sind Hind wrote more than 30 tutorials regarding the astrological phases of time and explained the movement of sun , moon, and five different planets present at that time. The original literature is lost but the translated manuscripts in Latin are still present in the Paris and London (oxford) museum.
Algebra was invented by the Muslim mathematician, Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi in the book entitled al-Kitab al-muhtasar fi hisab al-gabr wa-l-muqābala’ (The book of Summary Concerning Calculating by Transposition and Reduction), he wrote in 820.
Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi earlier transliterated as Algoritmior Algaurizin, ( c. 780, and died 850) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer during the Abbasid Empire, and also a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Al-Khwarizmi is considered by many to be the “ father of algebra” because some of his techniques on solving quadratic equations are still in use today. He was the first to solve equations using general methods. He solved the linear indeterminate equations, quadratic equations, second order indeterminate equations and equations with multiple variable.
Algebra is the Arabic word (aljabr) for “equation”, and the word“algorithm” comes from the author’s name, Al-Khwarizmi.
J. J. O’Conner and E. F. Robertson wrote in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive :
“Perhaps one of the most significant advances made by Arabic mathematics began at this time with the work of al-Khwarizmi, namely the beginnings of algebra. It is important to understand just how significant this new idea was. It was a revolutionary move away from the Greek concept of mathematics which was essentially geometry. Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as “algebraic objects”. It gave mathematics a whole new development path so much broader in concept to that which had existed before, and provided a vehicle for future development of the subject. Another important aspect of the introduction of algebraic ideas was that it allowed mathematics to be applied to itself in a way which had not happened before.”
Al-Khwarizmi is often considered the greatest mathematician of all time. He visited India and collected mathematical material for his book “Ilm al-jabr wa’d muqabalah”. He sold his book to the Romans. The source of the English word algebra was aljabr which in Arabic means ‘the equating’. His name became the word ‘algorism’, the old word for arithmetic. The same word was the root for ‘Algorithm’ used in computing. Through his writings, the decimal system and the use of zero were transmitted to the west.
Recently the outstanding contributions of Al-Khwarizmi to science and technology were recognized by the American media. Please Click hereto appreciate the ingenuity of Al-Khwarizmi in his phenomenal creation of algebra and also how smartly the letter “X” for the unknown is used by the West. Please also enlarge the video to full screen. It is indeed, mind boggling and should serve as a source of great inspiration and motivation for more Muslim inventions in the world.
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