The Origin of the Algorithm and the Arabic Connection

In the modern world one would associate the adjectives of “backward”, “fundamentalist”, “communalist” and maybe even “militant” with the Arab world. And one would be labeled a maniac for even entertaining the idea that it was the same Arab world which gave us our so called modern system of counting. In Arabic, their number system is called “arqa-m hindiyyah” which loosely translates to “Hindu-Arabic numerals”. Whats even more puzzling is the fact is that if it weren’t for one person belonging to that region, we probably wouldn’t have had computer in this day and age and you might not have been reading this article on this blog.

The name of that one man is Mohammed Ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi. He inhabited the exact place where we have almost created hell on earth: Baghdad, on the banks of the river tigris. It was in Baghdad where this man worked as a faculty member of the House of Wisdom between 800 & 847 CE (common era; a period previously referred to as A.D.). He even wrote one of the first books ever written on algebra in 830 CE. The book, back then, was called “al-Kitab al-mukhtasasar fi hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala”. The title of this book loosely translates as “the condensed book of calculation by restoration and comparison”. The preface of this book reads something like:

…what is easiest and most useful in arithmetic, such as men constantly require in cases of inheritance, legacies, partition, law-suits, and trade, in all their dealings with one another…

Students who deal with x, y, z and variables of the like in their algebra textbooks would hardly believe that they are studying what was once created to deal with such complications of daily life. But before he wrote this book, he wrote “On Calculations with Hindu Numerals” in 825 CE which was part translation and part explication of Indian Numerals as expounded by Brahmagupta.

Brahmagupta was a court astronomer in Ujjain like al-Khwarizmi, and he wrote the Brahma Sputa Siddhanta in 628 CE where he used and defined a new concept in mathematics, the ZERO for the first time. If it weren’t for this concept, there wouldn’t have been any calculus, nor any theoretical physics, nor any advancement in mathematics. He also wrote the Khandakhadyaka in 665 CE about astronomy. The Arab world learnt about the Indian system of counting when the second Abbasid Caliph invited a scholar from Ujjain called Kanka. Kanka introduced the concept Zero to the Arabic world.

This was then translated into Arabic by Al Fazaii around 770 CE.

Khwarizmi used these concepts in a book. The book itself was lost but its latin translation exists, and this translation is called Algorithmi. The name changed from Al-Khwarizmi to Algoritmi and is now called the concept of the algorithm.

Therefore, if it weren’t for this one man, Mohammed Ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, from the city of Baghdad, we wouldn’t have had the computer. For the fundamental idea on which all computer theory is based is the algorithm.

Courtesy The Hindu Young World Page 6, June 23, 2006. Original article by Serish Nanisetti