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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