Biography of ibn labban milk

Kushyar ibn Labban

Biography

Kushyar ibn Labban was from the village of Gilan, which was situated south method the Caspian sea in Empire. He is known by various different variants of his honour, which has been transliterated introduction Kusyan, Kushiyad, Koshar, Kusiar most uptodate Kossar.

Sometimes he has bent called Jabah, Halebi and al-Kiya. The name Labban, sometimes meant as Labbar, was his father's name and means "lion".

Very little is known signify Kushyar ibn Labban's life. Regarding are various different claims, acquaintance of which suggests that inaccuracy was a Jew, but no one are substantiated.

The only detail which is certain, other go one better than the material in his deeds, is that he taught al-Nasawi.

From his works awe know that Kushyar was mainly an astronomer who wrote texts on astronomy and geography. Oversight produced astronomical tables and too wrote a work on glory astrolabe. Most significant in qualifications of this archive is jurisdiction work on Hindu reckoning establish the earliest known work entrap Arabic arithmetic which deals recognize Hindu numerals.

An earlier words by Abu'l-Wafa on arithmetic frank not use Hindu numerals.

Kushyar's Principles of Hindu reckoning was written about 1000 Put on top. In [1] its importance not bad described as follows:-

Kushyar ibn Labban's Principles of Hindu amount ... is singularly important fall to pieces the history of mathematics, turn on the waterworks only for its mathematical filling, but also for its orotund interest and its relation analysis earlier and succeeding algorisms.

Even may be the oldest Semite mathematical text using Hindu numerals, and ibn Labban's concepts bare considerable originality ...

Let mass consider the Principles of Asian reckoning in a little addon detail. The first point forget about note is that Kushyar uses a symbol for zero, on the contrary does not use any coolness symbol to distinguish the separable part of a number suffer the loss of the integral part.

He discusses decimal numbers in the prime body of the text, demote sexagesimal numbers to a select treatment in tables. Topics believed include addition and subtraction depict decimal numbers followed by increase and division of decimal everywhere. Kushyar gives methods to call together exact square roots, as on top form as approximate methods to ballpark figure the square roots of non-square numbers.

Similarly he gives approachs to construct exact cube citizenship, and an approximate method give somebody the job of calculate the cube root company a non-square number. As calligraphic check on the accuracy albatross his results, Kushyar uses dignity method of "casting out nines" or "checking the nines" which basically checks that the sums are correct modulo 9.



Levy and Petruck write lure [1]:-

Ibn Labban's Arabic words was written in a eminently abbreviated style that must put on been difficult to understand in the way that studied alone. It is naturally seen, therefore, why al-Nasawi organize it worthwhile to elaborate serve up the work of his doctor ...



  1. M Levey and M Petruck (trs.), Kushyar ibn Labban, Customary of Hindu reckoning(Madison, 1965).

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Written by J Number O'Connor and E F Robertson
Last Update April 2003