Question 86102: Where does the word "algebra" come from?
Answer by bucky(2189)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! The following information comes from three sources. The first source (1) is from the magazine
"Saudi Aramco World", May/June 2007 issue, page 8. The second source (2) is quoted from
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and can be found by doing a Wikipedia search on "algebra."
And the third source (3) is Webster's New World Dictionary, second college edition, 1980
.
(1) [Harun al-Rashid] founded Baghdad's first hospital and a separate scientific academy
known as Bayt al-Hikmah ("House of Wisdom"). Initially little more than a caliph's
private library, the House of Wisdom became a full-blown research and translation
center and astronomical observatory under al-Rashid's son, Caliph al-Ma'mun, who ruled
from 813 to 833. It was here that the versatile al-Khwarizmi developed algebra and,
turning his hand to cartography, drafted an elaborate map tracing the meanders of the
Nile River.
(2) The name [algebra] is derived from the treatise written by the Persian mathematician
Muhammad bin Mūsā al-Khwārizmī titled (in Arabic "Al-Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala"
meaning "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing"), which provided
symbolic operations for the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations.
.
(3) algebra: (Arabic al-jabra meaning the reunion of broken parts, from al => "the" + jabra =>
"to reunite".)
.
Hopefully this gives you some useful background to the origin of the term we know as
"algebra."
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