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Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

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Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#51

Post by mehrdadn »

dfhdshfff wrote: post #24
namirez wrote: post #10

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. [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...

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.

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#52

Post by forgingahead »

namirez wrote: post #10

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. [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...

Slightly? The title is completely wrong!

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#53

Post by jacobolus »

Symmetry wrote: post #43
zwaps wrote: post #4

Let's not forget that the Islamic world was key (though not alone) in preserving our scientific and cultural knowledge. At that time, Islamic society was quite modern and tolerant - and even often the destination for persecuted religious groups such as the Jews in Spain. It is absolutely clear that modern Islam is, in fact, much more "conservative" than it used to be in the beginning. Indeed, the very beginning of Is…

It's really interesting reading Al-Khwarizmi writing back and forth with Ibn Sina speculating about life on other planets and whether they might have been visited by prophets too. Much, though not all, of the big scientific work in the Islamic world was in Iran and central Asia. But eventually enlightenment led to counter enlightenment and the rise of Gnosticism and mysticism. Then the Mongols rode in and killed ever…

For more,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samanid_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghaznavids

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghurid_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuk_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khwarazmian_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_Khwarezmia

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#54

Post by thaumasiotes »

acqq wrote: post #38
thaumasiotes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the Christian god is nameles Inherited from what developed as a norm in Judaism, where the name existed but then stopped being read (the most famous "one who must not be named"), but the original name of the deity is preserved in the given names used around the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophoric_name#Yahweh

For the theophoric names, I have a question you probably can't answer.

I've read that the form "Jehovah" results from reading YHWH as if it had the vowel points of the word adonai, "lord". But I can't help noticing that the prefix form of YHWH in names, for which the vowels are known, is yeho-. That really adds some credibility to "Jehovah", except that "Jehovah" supposedly comes from a completely unrelated convention.

How much do we know about the original vowels? How true is the adonai story?

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#55

Post by maram »

namirez wrote: post #10

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. [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...

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.

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#56

Post by dfhdshfff »

mehrdadn wrote: post #51
dfhdshfff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hold it to be obvious that I'm talking about the scientists (That lived in the Islamic Golden age) not about modern day Iran.

Plus Most of them were not born in Iran proper.

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#57

Post by namirez »

maram wrote: post #55
namirez wrote: post #10

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. [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...

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 li…

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].

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0303109

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#58

Post by jlg23 »

dfhdshfff wrote: post #24
namirez wrote: post #10

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. [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...

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.

> In the same way, that North africans refer to themselves as Arabs although genetically they are less than 50% Arab.

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.

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#59

Post by Haga »

namirez wrote: post #10

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. [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...

Iran, we meet again! The Americans of the meddle east.

Re: Arabic Mathematics: Forgotten Brilliance? (1999)

#60

Post by agumonkey »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #19
Rattled wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? [1] http://www-histo…

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.

I associated al-jabr as classification. The 'back'ness felt more like bring back order by arranging same kinds on same sides.
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