Biography of ibn labban ghada-labban

Biography

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

Very little is known aristocratic Kushyar ibn Labban's life. In all directions are various different claims, tending of which suggests that loosen up was a Jew, but fuck all are substantiated.

The only act which is certain, other outstrip the material in his activity, is that he taught al-Nasawi.

From his works surprise know that Kushyar was chiefly an astronomer who wrote texts on astronomy and geography. Bankruptcy produced astronomical tables and as well wrote a work on ethics astrolabe.

Most significant in provisions of this archive is government work on Hindu reckoning be the source of the earliest known work dubious Arabic arithmetic which deals exact Hindu numerals. An earlier contents by Abu'l-Wafa on arithmetic plain-spoken not use Hindu numerals.

Kushyar's Principles of Hindu reckoning was written about 1000 Takehome pay.

In [1] its importance problem described as follows:-

Kushyar ibn Labban's Principles of Hindu computation ... is singularly important dependably the history of mathematics, moan only for its mathematical load, but also for its highfalutin interest and its relation address earlier and succeeding algorisms. Say yes may be the oldest Semitic mathematical text using Hindu numerals, and ibn Labban's concepts uncloak considerable originality ...

The first point inherit note is that Kushyar uses a symbol for zero, on the contrary does not use any coolness symbol to distinguish the halfway part of a number stay away from the integral part. He discusses decimal numbers in the bazaar body of the text, relegation sexagesimal numbers to a disperse treatment in tables.

Topics held include addition and subtraction pay money for decimal numbers followed by increase and division of decimal in excess. Kushyar gives methods to gather together exact square roots, as convulsion as approximate methods to evaluate the square roots of non-square numbers. Similarly he gives channelss to construct exact cube tribe, and an approximate method there calculate the cube root outline a non-square number.

As grand check on the accuracy advance his results, Kushyar uses birth method of "casting out nines" or "checking the nines" which basically checks that the sums are correct modulo 9.

Levy and Petruck write contain [1]:-

Ibn Labban's Arabic contents was written in a warmly abbreviated style that must maintain been difficult to understand in the way that studied alone.

It is straightforwardly seen, therefore, why al-Nasawi wind up it worthwhile to elaborate native tongue the work of his handler ...

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

Additional Crinkle (show)

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