Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

Na‘im ibn Musa's lived in Baghdad in the second half of the 9th century. He was probably not a major mathematician. Still his Collection of geometrical propositions---recently edited and translated in French by Roshdi Rashed and Christian Houzel---reflects quite well the mathematical practice that was common in Thabit ibn Qurra's school. A relevant characteristic of Na‘im's treatise is its large use of a form of inferences that can be said ‘algebric' in a sense that will be explained. They occur both in proofs of theorems and in solutions of problems. In the latter case, they enter different sorts of problematic analyses that are mainly used to reduce the geometrical problems they are concerned with to al-Khwarizmi 's equations.

Comments

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, volume 18, issue 2, in 2008 following peer review. This article may not exactly replicate the final published version. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423908000532.

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

Cambridge University Press

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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