Talk:Al-Khwarizmi

Contents

1 Relevance of Islam 2 Cartography 3 Text for Possible Merging 4 Pre-Merge Histories 4.1 Al-Khawarizmi 4.2 Al-Khwarzimi 4.3 Al-Khwarizmi 5 Etymology

Relevance of Islam

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (780?-845?) was a Muslim mathematician and author whose work was fundamental to the development of the field of mathematics.

What the heck is "Muslim mathematician"? I thought math was a unified subject? If he's a Muslim, or famous for BEING a Muslim, let's say so.

I made a lot of edits downplaying how WONDERFUL this guy was. If he advanced and/or spread algebra, that's nice - and if he invented the concept of the algorithm, that's nice too. But leave out the gushing praise, okay? --Uncle Ed 16:50, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yes, you sure *DID* make a lot of changes. You ask "What the heck is Muslim mathematician?" -- I wonder if you ever asked "what the heck is Western?" You are either ignorant or prejusiced, or as is the case often with people who possess either one of the two attributes, both!

You removed the part that said "Mathematics and the sciences that are expressed in terms of mathematics would not be what they are today without the ground-breaking contributions of Al-Khwarizmi." -- this was no exaggeration at all, since Khwarazmi *IS* the one who defined and fomulated the so-called Arabic Number System (even though he himself was not an Arab). Without his amazing and groundbreaking work, chances are, to this day you would be using the stupid Roman Numerals.

[The two preceding 'graphs are from two edits (the second at 12:43, 2003 Nov 26) by User:67.30.100.98. --Jerzy(t) 07:12, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC) ]

[The following 'graph is Jerzy(t)'s response to the IP who criticized Uncle Ed's edit.]

Largely nonsense. Bcz of being in the right time and place, he put finishing touches on a system whose essentials came to him from mathematicians who happened to be Hindus. The West probably got good arithmetic and math sooner bcz Islamic culture was in a vital period then, but the best minds in a sufficiently dynamic culture always transcend their cultures by hunting down the world's best ideas, and we'd be using either base 5, 10, or 20 without him or Islam having ever existed. --Jerzy(t) 15:51, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

Hello Jerzy. A few points (regarding your above and below comments). Firstly, if you are deeply bothered by the fact that someone added "Muslim" to this article (and I agree with you on this point), it doesn't mean that you should now be unfair and unkind to Al-Khwarazmi for it, he had nothing to do with it. Secondly, your assertion about the so-called "Hundu mathematicians" is bogus. You cannot back it up with facts. It was Khwarazmi who for the first time defined and systematized the number system that we have today, the so-called "arabic number system". His books are still available. The ones who claim this comes from India, mostly do so out of their ignorance and hatered for Islam, because it is too "painful" for them to accept that the very foundation of modern science is a contribution from what they in their little mind perceive as "the Islamic world". If you understood his number system, you would laugh at yourself for talking about binary, octal, hexadecimal and other bases as independent "systems" as they all are well-defined within the same number system. And Khwarazmi is the one who defined this system, not some obscure "Hindu mathematicians" as you claim. Your attempt to trivialize his status and achievements as "being at the right place at the right time" was truly pathetic. Without his contribution, today your number system probably was still this antic: I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. .... and lastly, even though I would be the first to agree that emphacizing "Muslim" in this article is wrong, I wonder how many times have you made the same protest about numerous other articles where "Jewish" is emphacized? --K1 23:54, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm disappointed by such bizarre inferences as

• my being 'deeply bothered', and
• that my failure to mention the obvious (that Al-Khwarizmi was a mathematical genius comparable to the Greek geometers), or my disagreement with others' equating of greatness and indispensibility, amounts to 'unfair[ness] and unkind[ness]'.

I am concerned that anyone who paraphrases 'mathematicians who happened to be Hindus' (in the context of criticism of the phrase 'Muslim mathematician') into 'so-called "Hundu mathematicians" ' is probably over their head in trying to deal with the nuances of this discussion.

One need look no further than Zero#History for a name of one of the supposedly 'obscure "Hindu mathematicians" ' who gave Al-Khwarizmi giant shoulders to stand on. On the other hand, the inferences about my mathematical background suggest a tunnel-vision understanding of mathematics (perhaps as being started and completed by Al-Khwarizmi); not everyone who knows of his work can be expected to realize that his results follow inevitably (tho not necessarily immediately) from the Indian conceptualization of zero as number, perhaps in India, perhaps in Baghdad, perhaps in Pisa or Warsaw or Königsberg, no matter which of the two accounts at Arabic numerals#History is true.

Perhaps another form of tunnel vision is involved in the complaint about the use of "Jewish" in Wiki-bios. Al-Khwarizmi was a Persian mathematician (or perhaps an Arabized Persian mathematician; i haven't had the need to become versed in the relevant terminology). Charles Steinmetz was a German-American mathematician, because his ethnicity is summarized by the nationalities of the two countries he made his successive homes. Albert Einstein doesn't fit a nice hyphenated pattern because his ethnicity was more complex. He was a German-American Jewish mathematician, or an Americanized German-Jewish mathematician, because being Jewish was part of his ethnicity, no matter what his beliefs were. (He did say "God doesn't play with dice", but quantum physicists don't care whether he was talking about Jahweh or the Trinity. Or joking about the image of a bearded old man that children imagine taking care of things, which is what i've always assumed.) Ethnicity tells you worlds more that is encyclopedic about a person than either their beliefs (even if anyone really knew what anyone else's beliefs are) or what house of worship has their name on a list. It sounds like my colleague might think it unfair that "Jewish" is ambiguous between belief and ethnicity, and "Muslim" isn't, but WP isn't here to make the world fair.

I'm of the opinion that his religion must be stated because it directly contributed to his works and initiatives. However if the majority thinks it must not be stated, so be it. A. 05:45, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hello Hadj. I do not know of any religious books that Khwarazmi ever wrote. Do you know of any? There is no evidence that he was even a religious person. How do we know he was a dedicated muslim? And on what basis are you saying that his religion "directly contributed" to his scientific achievements and scholarship? --K1 07:48, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[The following 2 'graphs are Jerzy(t)'s response directly to Uncle Ed, and not to the 3 edits (one of them confusingly stating it is in part in response to my comments below!)

The inclusion of the word "Muslim" is an embarassment to Islam, especially when coupled with the claim in a summary about Islam being responsible for his work. A glance at the dates of Islamic technical workers' work of long-term value in fact shows that something besides being a Muslim is crucial to their productivity.

There should be a category tag for this to assist locating Muslim scientists, and an article about Islamic cultures' contributions to hard knowledge, but the number of scientists whose bios deserve mention of their belief systems is very small, and that usually bcz they were persecuted (for their beliefs or by their relgious own authorities) or because they made a mark in a belief-sytstem-oriented thought. (Einstein's pacifism comes to mind, tho it should be in the last few 'graphs of his bio.) --Jerzy(t) 15:51, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

BTW, after realizing that "language of Persian science" was misleading at best, and "language of Middle-Eastern science" was probably an anachronism, i realized that even more than any relevant empire, there was a "language of science in the Islamic world" at that time. I assume Uncle Ed and A. will agree with me that this is quite a different case from "Muslim mathematician". --Jerzy(t) 07:12, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC)

- WHAT IS THIS nonsense discussion about calling Kharazmi a Muslim Scholar or not? Why not?

After all, calling him as such will convey more information about him as he was from Muslim Middle-East, not from pre-Islamic Middle East etc.! Calling him a Muslim scholar should not hurt you if you are a true seeker of truth. It is amazing how some people can come up with petty arguments.-Serkan

-Also, I see that some obscure people here downplay the great works of such a scientist. How can you do that if you have a bit of knowledge and conciousness? He was without any exaggeration a great contributor to Mathematics. I see a lot of ignorance and prejudice in these claims. -Serkan

---

Cartography

He supervised the work of 70 geographers to create the first map of the known world. I don't think so. First surviving? First Muslim? First what? Wetman 00:51, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Personally I have no knowledge of his contributions to the field of cartography, but assuming what the article mentions in that regard is correct, it would not be at all surprising if that was the first map of the then "known world", considering he lived in the 8th-9th century. Why is it surpsing for you?    --K1 01:22, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It surprises me because it doesn't appear to make sense. "Known world" is not an absolute entity. Known to whom? Maybe al-Khwarizmi supervised construction of a map of the world that was known to his culture, but it certainly wasn't a map of the whole world, and it's certainly true that other cultures had made earlier maps of the parts of the world that they knew about. This would include very limited maps made by cultures for whom the "known world" was very small. So unless there's something I'm missing or I don't understand, it's very difficult to believe that the claim is true, as written. -- Dominus 16:47, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the claim that he created the "first map of the world" is bogus. I am going to change that. In fact, I am not even sure that he was ever involved in a cartographical project directly, although I do know that he wrote a scientific gerographical book in which he defined the world in terms of lattitudes and longitudes (title of the book: Thorat-al-Ardh or Face of the Earth). I will try to rewrite this article one of these days, I think this article can be improved quite a bit.    --K1 01:45, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Text for Possible Merging

Content from page redirected here: I may try to merge this.

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi was born around the year 780 in Baghdad, which is now in Irak and he died around the year 850. We do not know very much about his life, so many guesses have been made based on very little evidence. Probably, Harun al-Rashid was the fifth Caliph of the Abbasid dinasty when Al-Khwarizmi was born. His court was in the capital, Baghdad, and he brought different intellectual disciplines to the Arabic world. He had two sons, al-Amin and al-Mamun. When Harun died, in 809, there was a violent fight between the two brothers. Later on, al-Mamun won the war. On the other hand, al-Amin was killed in 813. Al-Mamun became Calìph. He continued bringing different disciplines to his empire and he founded the House of Wisdom, which was an academy. There, Greek philosophical and scientific works were translated. Moreover, he built up a library, which was the biggest library after the one in Alexandria. He also set up some observatories, where Muslim astronomers studied the stars,... Al-Khwarizmi was one of the scholars at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. He and his colleagues translated Greek scientific works and studied algebra, geometry and astronomy. It is certain that Al-Khwarizmi worked under the reign of Al-Mamun because he dedicated two texts to the Caliph. These texts were his treatise on algebra and his treatise on astronomy. This algebra treatise (Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala) was the most important of all his works. It is the first book to be written on algebra.

Charles Matthews 15:20, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Pre-Merge Histories

The following are histories of pages that have been converted to redirects here. This record of the respective histories may help comprehension of the merged history that will result from the history-merge i am undertaking.

(Specific versions and comparisons between them may still be retrieved from the history page of the merged version, namely that of Al-Khwarizmi

Al-Khawarizmi

• 22:53, 2004 Jun 13 Docu m (fix link)
• 03:18, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (Giving up & removing comment too: # REDIRECT Al-Khwarizmi)
• 03:17, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (Remove text, leaving only comment after redir)
• 03:16, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (Single line w/ comment & extra text, trying to fix redirect)
• 03:04, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (# REDIRECT Al-Khwarizmi)
• 02:19, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (# REDIRECT Al-Khwarizmi)
• 09:41, 2004 Mar 18 Charles Matthews m (fx lk)
• 01:17, 2004 Feb 15 Docu m ({{msg:stub}})
• 04:56, 2003 Jul 19 Silver Maple m (stub)

Al-Khwarzimi

• 12:35, 2004 May 12 JASpencer (Redirecting to proper article)
• 12:31, 2004 May 12 JASpencer (Setting this up)

Al-Khwarizmi

• 00:03, 2004 Jul 22 Jerzy (- redundant phrase)
• 00:02, 2004 Jul 22 Jerzy (lessen formality of caption to match the stamp's text; - claim that stamp is based on a millenium-old portrait; status of Arabic)
• 19:48, 2004 Jul 20 Roozbeh
• 14:39, 2004 Jul 20 212.238.143.99
• 14:38, 2004 Jul 20 212.238.143.99
• 14:37, 2004 Jul 20 212.238.143.99
• 06:16, 2004 Jul 20 Sundar (Famous works - spelling Arithmatic => Arithmetic)
• 04:09, 2004 Jul 20 Stevertigo m (adding new category Category:Ancient mathematicians)
• 22:06, 2004 Jul 16 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason m (is:)
• 14:53, 2004 Jul 16 Chris 73 (added image)
• 14:10, 2004 Jul 11 Szajd m (+hu:)
• 21:02, 2004 Jun 20 Lzur
• 05:53, 2004 Jun 19 Ellywa m (nl)
• 15:58, 2004 Jun 4 Jerzy (rv to 21:18, 2004 Jun 3 edit by Roozbeh; see talk)
• 00:00, 2004 Jun 4 Roozbeh m
• 23:48, 2004 Jun 3 Hadj
• 23:48, 2004 Jun 3 Hadj (nuancé)
• 22:50, 2004 Jun 3 Roozbeh m (readded "mulsim", if anyone likes to do a debate, go on. i don't think this is really important.)
• 21:18, 2004 Jun 3 Roozbeh (some formatting, removal of Muslim in the intro line)
• 17:54, 2004 Jun 2 Hadj (because the Islamic culture encouraged people to think (see other scientist during the Chaliphates))
• 03:20, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (fix link)
• 03:00, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (Melding of the combined texts)
• 02:42, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (Merger of full text of both, reordered)
• 02:14, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (rv to last by Schneelocke, as base for merging Al-Khawarizmi in)
• 02:11, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (Tsk. forgot it needed editing, so forgot to preview)
• 02:07, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (Overwrite with snapshot of history page of Al-Khawarizmi article, about to be merged.)
• 02:00, 2004 Jun 2 Jerzy (overwrite with smaller article, to support comparisons between it and merged article)
• 14:34, 2004 May 30 Schneelocke m
• 12:26, 2004 May 16 Henrygb
• 08:33, 2004 Apr 21 199.183.105.198
• 14:07, 2004 Apr 14 Roozbeh (corrected paragraph about native tongue and removed the dispute message (which I had placed there myself))
• 06:51, 2004 Apr 14 130.216.191.183
• 20:40, 2004 Apr 11 80.58.47.42 (es:)
• 18:26, 2004 Apr 2 Michael Hardy m
• 10:05, 2004 Apr 1 Jengod (npov, copy edit, cleanup)
• 01:07, 2004 Mar 24 XJamRastafire m (Correction de:)
• 18:31, 2004 Mar 6 Roozbeh
• 01:49, 2004 Mar 3 K1 (minor editorial adjustment)
• 09:11, 2004 Feb 29 213.233.160.4 (+NPOV)
• 14:38, 2004 Feb 21 Roozbeh m (al-jabr o al-muqabala -> al-jabr "wa" al-muqabala)
• 00:43, 2004 Feb 20 155.198.17.114
• 17:25, 2004 Feb 14 Ayman m (Ibn -> bin (see naming conventions) also fixed Arabic name)
• 15:22, 2004 Feb 14 Ayman m (ar:)
• 14:22, 2004 Feb 12 Roozbeh m (fixed a typo in Arabic name)
• 14:09, 2004 Feb 12 Roozbeh (moving things around, removing double mentions of information, provided Arabic and Persian original names)
• 17:01, 2004 Feb 11 130.88.197.124
• 16:59, 2004 Feb 11 130.88.197.124
• 01:41, 2004 Jan 7 Robbot m (Andre Engels - robot Modifying:de,fr)
• 03:35, 2003 Dec 23 Ellmist (==External links==)
• 02:05, 2003 Dec 11 24.5.138.79
• 02:04, 2003 Dec 11 24.5.138.79 (hahaha)
• 12:58, 2003 Nov 26 Chancemill m (A better rephrasing.)
• 12:44, 2003 Nov 26 67.30.100.98
• 16:46, 2003 Nov 24 Ed Poor ("Muslim mathematician" => "mathematical pioneer", etc. - basically toning down praise)
• 18:37, 2003 Nov 2 Adam Bishop m (fr:Al-Khwarizmi)
• 16:09, 2003 Nov 2 Mats Halldin m (+sv:)
• 20:09, 2003 Oct 8 Dominus m (wikified dates)
• 01:15, 2003 Oct 6 Olivier m
• 02:23, 2003 Aug 29 XJamRastafire m (+sl:)
• 00:08, 2002 Oct 5 Isis m
• 20:36, 2002 Sep 16 63.205.228.14
• 00:35, 2002 Sep 15 63.205.228.14
• 00:33, 2002 Sep 15 63.205.228.14
• 15:18, 2002 Sep 13 Andre Engels m (disambiguation)
• 02:02, 2002 Aug 25 Brion VIBBER m (linked arabic numerals)
• 02:00, 2002 Aug 25 Brion VIBBER m (lang links: +de,eo)
• 09:36, 2002 Jun 14 Stepnwolf m
• 15:43, 2002 Feb 25 Conversion script m (Automated conversion)

Etymology

I removed two adjacent sentences, the second quite recent:

1. The word algorithm is a corruption of early English algorisme, which came from Latin algorismus, which in turn came from the name of al-Khowarizmi.
2. Other scholars citing his work in Latin language used the expression "dixit algorismi" ("as said Al-Khowarizmi"), which is believed to have coined the expression.

Neither of these adds to the article more than does the simple statement

The words "algorithm" and "algorism" derive ultimately from his name.

The first expands a standard dictionary etymology into a sentence, as if that represented something more encyclopedic.

The second is poorly written, especially in light of its being written to be slammed up against the first, without any visible effort to establish what relationship brings them together. This is especially unwelcome since the second seems to intend to contradict the first.

There is, by the way, some doubt about the meaning of the second.

• Standing alone, i would take it to be a garbled version of something close to
  • When other mathematical scholars, in their own works in Latin, cited his Arabic work, they would precede an assertion with "dixit algorismi", Latin for "(as) Al-Khowarizmi said". And that's where "algorithm" comes from.
• A colleague, in an edit summarized "rewording to remove ambiguity" (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Al-Khwarizmi&diff=4797805&oldid=4797120), rewords, to mistakenly attribute the use of Latin to him (tho we know he wrote in Arabic), apparently in order to permit hinting at some kind of relationship with the first sentence, by making the "Other [mathematical] scholars" into "other etymologists":
  • Other scholars cite his work in Latin language where he has used the expression “dixit algorismi” (“as said Al-Khowarizmi”), which is believed to be the precursor to the expression.
    • I'm sorry to have misunderstood the intended meaning of the previous sentence and to have reworded it into a factually wrong sentence. -- Sundar 09:53, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

In either case, however, nothing about etymology is explicated: perhaps "algorismi" is a Latin inflection, to suit that syntactic role, of some other Latin rendering of his name, but it sure looks like just a transliteration. If that's what it's getting at, we have not been given the means of guessing it.

It is, however, interesting that -ismus is a noun-forming suffix in Latin, giving rise to the noun-forming suffix -ism in English, and the coincidence may have played a role in determining which words derived from it (two nouns) survived. (If somone name Melish contributed to English-speaking culture, we might expect an adjective "melish" more than a noun.)

I have moved this text here rather than discarding it, and tried to clarify it, in the hope that it may later be of some use. The etymological events that would be of some interest here concern the modern contrast between "algorithm" (the familiar general term) and "algorism", a now fairly obscure term WP regards as referring to the decimal notation system. But IMO "algorism" is surely connected to the other by the need, in introducing any positional notation, to explicitly state the algorithms that specify how math operations are done on such numbers. (For instance, the carry and borrow steps are part of algorithms -- that few of our elementary-school teachers used the term "algorithm" in describing.)

At present, we lack the raw material for writing such a discussion: our wretched account of the contents of his work hints not at all at whether he

• used a term to mean "algorithm" (if he paid no attention to the question of guaranteed finite completion, i'd argue he laid a foundation for the concept, but didn't arrive at it),
• stated any algorithms where a formal proof of computability needs to go beyond "inspection" ("Look, stupid, you've got a finite number of digits N; you multiply them pairwise, with no more than N²/4 pairs, and each pair takes no more than M steps; of course you have to run out of pairs, and any fool can see you're done then!")
• stated any algorithms beyond those of elementary-school arithmetic.

The terminology stinks of him not having felt a need to distinguish between algorism's algorithms and more general algorithms, and when we have a better article, the etymology will be one tool in describing the staged elaboration of the concepts, which is an encyclopedic topic of history of mathematics (and the sociology and psychology of discovery), and of more than etymological interest.

--Jerzy(t) 09:19, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)