Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.66

c13.66

The Arabs acquired Algebra extending to simple and compound (meaning quadratic) equations; but it was confined, so far as appears, to limited problems of those degrees: and they possessed it so early as the close of the eighth century, or commencement of the ninth. Treatises were at that period written in the Arabic language on the Algebraic Analysis, by two distinguished mathematicians who flourished under the Abbasside Almamun: and the more ancient of the two, Muhammed ben Musa *Al Khuwarezmi*, is recognised among the Arabians as the first who made Algebra known to them. He is the same, who abridged, for the gratification of Almamun, an astronomical work taken from the Indian system in the preceding age, under Almansur. He framed tables likewise, grounded on those of the Hindus; which he professed to correct. And he studied and communicated to his countrymen the Indian compendious method of computation; that is, their arithmetic, and, as is to be inferred, their analytic calculus also.100