Person: Al-Banna
Ibn al-Banna was an Islamic mathematician who wrote a large number of works including an introduction to Euclid's Elements, an algebra text and various works on astronomy.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- There is a claim that al-Banna was born in Granada in Spain and moved to North Africa for his education.
- The strong link between Granada and Morocco may account for the confusion as to which country al-Banna was a native.
- Morocco was certainly the country that al-Banna was educated in, learning the leading mathematical skills of the period.
- At the university in Fez Al-Banna taught all branches of mathematics, which at this time included arithmetic, algebra, geometry and astronomy.
- Many students studied under al-Banna in this thriving academic community.
- One difficulty with the works on mathematics is knowing how much of the material which al-Banna presents is original and how much is simply his version of work by earlier Arab mathematicians which has been lost.
- We should certainly say that al-Banna does not claim any originality and, indeed, the style of his writing would suggest that he is collecting together ideas that he has learnt from other mathematicians.
- Perhaps al-Banna's most famous work is Talkhis amal al-hisab (Summary of arithmetical operations) and the Raf al-Hijab which is al-Banna's own commentary on the Talkhis amal al-hisab.
- We refer the reader to the biography of al-Qalasadi where we present arguments to show that neither al-Banna nor al-Qalasadi were the inventors of mathematical notation.
Born 29 December 1256, Marrakesh, Morocco. Died 13 July 1321, Marrakesh, Morocco.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
African, Ancient Arab, Astronomy, Origin Morocco, Special Numbers And Numerals
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
