Title is slightly misleading! Most of them are Islamic but not Arabic. Khawrazmi [1], Karaji [2], Khayyam [3], and Tusi [4] were all Persian. Ibn Haytham wrote only in Arabic though.
It’s a shorthand; “Arabic” or “Islamic” mathematicians were from a wide range of religions, ethnic groups, regions, etc.
It’s similar to the way we call all of the mathematicians of ~ 500 BCE – 500 CE “Greek”, even though most of the later ones were Roman citizens living in Egypt or elsewhere.
Or the way we call Mesopotamian mathematics generically “Babylonian”, even though most of it was from other cities, and some of the relevant developments lumped in are from before Babylon per se existed, done by people of a different ethnic group who spoke a different language.
Or the way Soviet scientists are often called “Russian”.
The Greeks living in Egypt were actually Greeks, even during the existence of the Roman Empire.
The Persian mathematicians living in Persia in the times after the Islamic conquest simply weren't Arabs, exactly like the Greeks weren't Romans after the Roman conquest.
One doesn't get the new ethnicity by being occupied.
>Nor were all these mathematicians Arabs, but for convenience we will call our topic "Arab mathematics".
>The regions from which the "Arab mathematicians" came was centred on Iran/Iraq but varied with military conquest during the period. At its greatest extent it stretched to the west through Turkey and North Africa to include most of Spain, and to the east as far as the borders of China.
But is it really a convenience, or is it just a way of ratifying our own ignorance after it has been caught out. "Iranian" mathematicians would be just as convenient, and less in inaccurate.
"Arabic Mathematicians" has some justification as (I suppose) most of these guys were publishing in the Arabic language. But to then switch to ethnic designator Arab is plain wrong.
This is the reason its called Islamic Civilization. Most of its scientist weren't Arab. Arabic dictionary wasn't even written by an Arab.
But as I have noticed many people don't feel comfortable to reference a religion, so they go with race.
But find it interesting that we label these scientist based on their origin, not the place that gave them all the reasons to become all they were capable of becoming..
This is like saying Sergey Brin is a Russian entrepreneur.
If Brin lived in Russia, spoke Russian, and wrote books in Russian we wouldn't call him American just because he wrote a few books in English too.
Perhaps you're not familiar with the history of that part of the world, but the individuals that I named were Persian speakers, who lived in a region that is called the Greater Iran today, and wrote most of their work in Persian. But in all fairness, Arabic was the lingua-franca at the time so they wrote books in Arabic too.
A better example would be to call Grigori Perelman an American mathematician because he published his work on arXiv [1].
Arab refers to the people living in the Arabic world. If you were to bind it by an ethnicity, most of the people living in the Arab world "Today" would not be Arabs.
From Wikipedia: Arabs are a population inhabiting the Arab world.
namirez's point is that the historical people mentioned are Persians being called Arabs. And there are Persians that would take offense to this association.
While you are correct in that it is an exonym, it's not exactly what I, and I assume many others today, would think of when you say "colonial." The origin of the word dates back to thousands of years ago when no present government or society existed.
It's out of date, but that's OK when talking historically. And it was no more colonial than saying "Germany" instead of "Deutschland". Personally I prefer the term "Iran" even for historical usage because it is both older and (usually) more accurate.
But "Persian" is not something that foreigners imposed. It was originally the name of a particular Iranian nation that took over the empire thousands and of years ago. Their name then stuck around in some contexts long after that dynasty was gone, which is why the language is called "Farsi" (anglicised to "Persian").
arab is not used as an ethnicity but refers to someone who speaks arabic as a mother tongue. In the same way, that North africans refer to themselves as Arabs although genetically they are less than 50% Arab.
A whopping ~2% of Iranians have Arabic as their native language. That means, if you're going based on language, you're mislabeling 98% of the population.
Many Islamic (not just Arab. Also Persian and others) scholars were on the right track about identifying evolution, and far from the evolution denying general populace today.
Wow, I had no idea! "[they] were on the right track" is an understatement.
... on what he referred to as the "gradual process of creation." He stated that the Earth began with abiotic components such as "minerals." Slowly, primitive stages of plants such as "herbs and seedless plants" developed and eventually "palms and vines." Khaldun connects the later stages of plant development to the first stages of animal development. Finally, he claims that the greater thought capabilities of human beings was "reached from the world of the monkeys."
I wonder, though, to which extent that was somewhat idle speculation, similar to Democritus stating that the world consists of atoms 400 BCE, without really any evidence for it (let alone a fully formed theory).
The word Algorithm comes from a mathematician named al-Khwarizmi. Many words that begin with Al (Arabic definite article) are of Arabic origin. Alcohol is another one :)
I was told of Algebra coming from Al-Jabr meaning "number games". I was surprised I didn't see this mentioned in the article, until I found the book mentioned in Al-Khwarizmi's biography [1]. The book's title is "Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala" but no translation is given and Google's translation "Al Jaber account and interview" is not helpful. Can anyone confirm or deny the explanation I was given?
جبر, in transliteration, jabr, is the root of the word and the closest meaning is to bring (with a possible connotation of doing so against the entities natural inclination or state) back together parts (in healing).
To my mind, mathematically it would be closest to the literal concept of integration, but that is calculus and not what is generally considered to be algebra.
This is also the origin of some definite articles in romance languages - el in Spanish and l' in French. So Alhambra in Spain might have been called Al Hambra or similar instead.
Interestingly, in Persian (which uses Arabic script and shares some loanwords) which is a totally different language, the definite article is assumed, and it instead has an explicit indefinite article (-i or -yi) added to a noun/adjective.
There's a ton of them in Spanish, due to the fact that Spain was partially occupied for centuries (which also has left some amazing architecture like the Alhambra in Granada, or the Alcazar in Seville). Alcohol as in English, but also almohada (pillow), alcalde (mayor), algodón (cotton),... and many more that don't start with "al".
Arabic and Hebrew are both Semitic languages. Elohim is the Hebrew word for "gods", the plural form of el, "god", as seen most commonly today in Hebrew names like Michael, Samuel, Raphael, Emmanuel, Elijah, Eliezer, etc. etc. etc.
Allah is just the Arabic cognate, plus the definiteness marker. So yes, anyone speaking Arabic will use that word to refer to any god, and anyone speaking Arabic in the past would have used that word to refer to any god. Similarly, a German today wouldn't hesitate to apply the word "Gott" ("god") to Thor, because Thor is a god. Whether the hypothetical German is Christian isn't really relevant, and neither is the fact that the Christian god is nameless, being usually referred to by a title such as "God", "Lord", "Father", etc.
Muslims people believe in the Christian/Hebrew single God indeed. They just think that the right way to do it is through Mohammed (The muslim prophet) teaching. The argument is that Mohammed is the last prophet that god sent and thus should be the one to follow.
I am not sure why this is a surprise. The early Islamic period was a cultural golden age while Europeans were lost in a dark age. Many contributions from that period resulted in advancements for mathematics, exploration, literature, astronomy, and other ares that are still felt today.
1- Everyone who writes in the same language is from the same country and ethnic group.
2- Everyone who wrote in Latin is Italian
3- Newton and Descartes wrote in Latin
THEREFORE:
::: Newton and Descartes are Italian.
Impeccable logic !
Another gem of flawless argumentation is to say "who cares about ethnicity?! and let's just move on". Well it's been almost two millennia of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Why don't we just get this very simple fact correct and apply the same intellectual scrutiny that we apply to other areas here as well?
IMHO This is just inexcusable sloppiness and to be honest beneath any human being with a modicum of culture.
> 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.
Nearly all of the great "arabic" scholars were not arabic at all, they simply wrote in the arabic language. Most of then were Tajik or Uzbek ethnicity.
most of it was mathematics they learnt from translated books from Sanskrit , Prakrit ( In India ) and Mandarin(Chinese) . None of it was original Arab work , most of Arab historians who came along with invaders have mentioned in detail how learned people were taken in as slaves to translate works in arabic
What do you mean none of it is original, we are talking about a 400 years of process here, science always takes inspiration from all prior studies, do not discredit thousands of scientists that actually inspired western science. Also they were Muslim scientists different ethnicities, e.g Persian, Turkic and definitely Arabs as well.
He means none of the work is original.. neither the number system.. nor the additive and series based mathematics.. it's just a translation.. based10 numbers have been inuse in India for thousands of years.. it's like Columbus finding America..
Readit News
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Musa_al-Khwarizmi
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Karaji
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayyam
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharaf_al-D%C4%ABn_al-%E1%B9%A...
It’s similar to the way we call all of the mathematicians of ~ 500 BCE – 500 CE “Greek”, even though most of the later ones were Roman citizens living in Egypt or elsewhere.
Or the way we call Mesopotamian mathematics generically “Babylonian”, even though most of it was from other cities, and some of the relevant developments lumped in are from before Babylon per se existed, done by people of a different ethnic group who spoke a different language.
Or the way Soviet scientists are often called “Russian”.
The Persian mathematicians living in Persia in the times after the Islamic conquest simply weren't Arabs, exactly like the Greeks weren't Romans after the Roman conquest.
One doesn't get the new ethnicity by being occupied.
Deleted Comment
>Nor were all these mathematicians Arabs, but for convenience we will call our topic "Arab mathematics".
>The regions from which the "Arab mathematicians" came was centred on Iran/Iraq but varied with military conquest during the period. At its greatest extent it stretched to the west through Turkey and North Africa to include most of Spain, and to the east as far as the borders of China.
"Arabic Mathematicians" has some justification as (I suppose) most of these guys were publishing in the Arabic language. But to then switch to ethnic designator Arab is plain wrong.
But as I have noticed many people don't feel comfortable to reference a religion, so they go with race.
But find it interesting that we label these scientist based on their origin, not the place that gave them all the reasons to become all they were capable of becoming..
This is like saying Sergey Brin is a Russian entrepreneur.
Perhaps you're not familiar with the history of that part of the world, but the individuals that I named were Persian speakers, who lived in a region that is called the Greater Iran today, and wrote most of their work in Persian. But in all fairness, Arabic was the lingua-franca at the time so they wrote books in Arabic too.
A better example would be to call Grigori Perelman an American mathematician because he published his work on arXiv [1].
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0303109
From Wikipedia: Arabs are a population inhabiting the Arab world.
Also from Wikipedia: Persia, present day Iran, is not part of the Arab world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_world
If a Russian, scientist, lived and studied in USA, to which country would you attribute his work or achievements, Russia or USA
For those who would like to read a little more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Iran
But "Persian" is not something that foreigners imposed. It was originally the name of a particular Iranian nation that took over the empire thousands and of years ago. Their name then stuck around in some contexts long after that dynasty was gone, which is why the language is called "Farsi" (anglicised to "Persian").
Dead Comment
Not sure where you got this from, here in Morocco, calling a Berber an Arab is a pretty sure way to piss him/her off.
See the short "history" section in this article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_evolution
... on what he referred to as the "gradual process of creation." He stated that the Earth began with abiotic components such as "minerals." Slowly, primitive stages of plants such as "herbs and seedless plants" developed and eventually "palms and vines." Khaldun connects the later stages of plant development to the first stages of animal development. Finally, he claims that the greater thought capabilities of human beings was "reached from the world of the monkeys."
[1] http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Al-Kh...
The book's name in English is: "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing"
So Al-jabr meaning is very close to "calculation by Completion" in that context.
To my mind, mathematically it would be closest to the literal concept of integration, but that is calculus and not what is generally considered to be algebra.
This source[1] states it as
>the science of restoring what is missing and equating like with like
[1] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/algebra
This is also the origin of some definite articles in romance languages - el in Spanish and l' in French. So Alhambra in Spain might have been called Al Hambra or similar instead.
Interestingly, in Persian (which uses Arabic script and shares some loanwords) which is a totally different language, the definite article is assumed, and it instead has an explicit indefinite article (-i or -yi) added to a noun/adjective.
Allah is just the Arabic cognate, plus the definiteness marker. So yes, anyone speaking Arabic will use that word to refer to any god, and anyone speaking Arabic in the past would have used that word to refer to any god. Similarly, a German today wouldn't hesitate to apply the word "Gott" ("god") to Thor, because Thor is a god. Whether the hypothetical German is Christian isn't really relevant, and neither is the fact that the Christian god is nameless, being usually referred to by a title such as "God", "Lord", "Father", etc.
Deleted Comment
Yes, Arab alchemists preceded European alchemists.
2- Everyone who wrote in Latin is Italian
3- Newton and Descartes wrote in Latin
THEREFORE:
::: Newton and Descartes are Italian.
Impeccable logic !
Another gem of flawless argumentation is to say "who cares about ethnicity?! and let's just move on". Well it's been almost two millennia of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Why don't we just get this very simple fact correct and apply the same intellectual scrutiny that we apply to other areas here as well?
IMHO This is just inexcusable sloppiness and to be honest beneath any human being with a modicum of culture.
> 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.