Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.42

c13.42

The operation of *restoring* negative quantities, if any there be, to the positive form, which is an essential step with them, is termed *jebr*, or with the article *Aljebr*, the mending or restoration. That of *comparing*, the terms and taking like from like, which is the next material step in the process of resolution, is called by them *mukabalah* comparison. Hence the name of *Tarik aljebr wa almukabala*, ‘the method of restoration and comparison’, which obtained among the Arabs for this branch of the Analytic art; and hence our name of Algebra, from Leonardo of Pisa’s exact version of the Arabic title. *Firistakhrajul majhulat* ba tarík aljebr wa almukabalah,65 De solutione quarundam quæstionum secundum modum Algebrae et Almuchabalae.66