How Muslims Did Not Invent Algebra

Enza Ferreri Blog ^ | 2 August 2013 | Enza Ferreri

[Cronos]

There’s nothing wrong with Arabs intellectually, but Islam stifles them.

Correct

[Verginius Rufus]

The Indians are our enemies? Who knew?

Anyone who watched some of the old Westerns? Or Philip Sheridan.

[Verginius Rufus]

Khalil? Which Khalil?

If you mean Khalil Greene, he can't go to Mecca...he's a member of the Baha'i faith.

[Vesparado]

The American Indians invented algebra? Who knew? No wonder I can’t understand those symbols on the side of teepees!

The Great Spirit would be so proud ... :)

[Verginius Rufus]

Sirius, Arcturus, Spica, Regulus, Antares, Polaris, Procyon, the Pleiades, the Hyades, Castor and Pollux are all Greek or Latin names. The constellations have Greek or Latin names, even those invented in recent centuries like Telescopium or Octans. But I think the majority of the bright stars are now known by Arabic names (sometimes garbled)—Vega, Deneb, Altair, Rigel, etc.—an accident of the fact that the medieval Western Europeans obtained Ptolemy’s work via the Arabs.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 8/11/2013.

Thanks Enza Ferreri.

There is archaeological evidence that the roots of algebra date back to the ancient Babylonians, then developed in Egypt and Greece. The Chinese and even more the Indians also advanced algebra and wrote important works on the subject. The Alexandrian Greek mathematician Diophantus (3rd century AD), sometimes called "the father of algebra", wrote a series of books, called Arithmetica, dealing with solving algebraic equations. Another Hellenistic mathematician who contributed to the progress of algebra was Hero of Alexandria, as did the Indian Brahmagupta in his book Brahmasphutasiddhanta. With the Italian Leonardo Pisano (known as Leonardo Fibonacci, as he was the son of Bonacci) in the 13th century, another Italian mathematician, Girolamo Cardano, author in 1545 of the 40-chapter masterpiece Ars magna ("The great art"), and the late-16th-century French mathematician Francois Viete, we move from the prehistory of algebra to the beginning of the classical discipline of algebra.

[Pollster1]

Wait a minute! Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's Book on Addition and Subtraction after the Method of the Indians was based on work in India, just like Hindu-Arabic numbers? Who would have guessed?

[rdl6989]

Custer wore arrow shirts. It’s true.

[odds]

ZERO [0], was invented originally by Babylonians.

Khwārizmīe (a Persian), perfected earlier concept (by Babylonians), for algebra. And, yes, he was a Persian of Zoroastrian faith.

There is no “Islamic civilisation”, only converts of other religions to Islam, mostly converting because they had to.

[AdmSmith]

If you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals and check what they write in different languages it is interesting that in the English version the numerals are called Arabic numerals, also called Hindu-Arabic, or Indo-Arabic numerals.

But, in the Arabic text they just say Arabic numerals, in the Iranian version they say that the numerals came from India but were introduced by Iranian Muslim mathematicians.

In the Indian text they are called Indian Digitss. It is as well mentioned that in the Quraysh tribe (the tribe of Mohammad) only seven persons could write.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks AdmSmith.

[odds]

Just saw your ping to me here.

Here are 2 interesting and related links:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/math-whizzes-ancient-babylon-figured-out-forerunner-calculus

https://explorable.com/mesopotamian-astronomy

[odds]

Another link in tandem with the ones I previously posted.

Like to know your views. Though to me seems very clear Babylonians at the very least understood the concept of zero [0] way before Indians, Chinese or Persians — most definitely way before Islam was conceived in Arabia.

Though the original Babylonian concept was later perfected by Khawarazmi. That’s what we know today.

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/babylon/

[FreedomPoster]

Bfl

[FreedomPoster]

>>There’s nothing wrong with Arabs intellectually, but Islam stifles them.

Actually, that’s not true, after centuries of cousin marriage. Do some searches on Middle Eastern consanguinity and read some of the abstracts of the scholarly papers on the subject.

[FreedomPoster]

Oh, and then you add in the Islamic stifling, and you get the modern Middle East.

[jpsb]

They also did not "invent" zero.

From wiki

The origin of the modern decimal-based place value notation can be traced to the Aryabhatiya (5th century Indian mathematician), which states "thanat sthanadaaguaa syat "from place to place each is ten times the preceding"

The rules governing the use of zero appeared for the first time in the Brahmasputha Siddhanta (7th century). This work considers not only zero, but negative numbers, and the algebraic rules for the elementary operations of arithmetic with such numbers. In some instances, his rules differ from the modern standard, specifically the definition of the value of zero divided by zero as zero.

[Sirius Lee]

Every time you use Arabic number our enemies win.

They're not. They're Sanskrit.

[odds]

Good post.

Though Sanskrit (Indian) is new, comparatively.

Cuneiform is much older, non Semitic, and was used by Sumerians, Babylonians, Persians (Cyrus's Declaration was in Cuneiform, Not Sanskrit) etc.. for their written work, numbers inclusive. Example below for zero [0].

See links in 72 & in 73, specifically.

[AdmSmith]

From your link:
To write, the Mesopotamians pressed the ends of cut reeds into wet clay, making the distinctive, cuneiform wedge shaped marks, the basis of their written language. Thousands of these baked clay tablets survive, allowing historians to glean a unique insight of the Mesopotamian life and society and, after many trials and tribulations, were translated.
https://explorable.com/mesopotamian-astronomy

We should make sure that there are copies of these tablets. The probability is close to 1 that Daesh/ISIL will destroy them.