Used with
permission of Maiken Naylor, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA,
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/sel/exhibits/stamps
Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a Persian mathematician of the 9th century whose name comes down to us in the word "algorithm." The translation of his arithmetic treatises into Latin in the 12th century brought the advantages of the Indo-Arabic method of positional counting, including the use of zero, to western Europe, where counting tables based on the abacus and Latin numerals were still used. The title of his work Al-jabr wa'l muqabalah has become our word "algebra."