The Algebra of Mohammed Ben Musa-Frederic Rosen

The Algebra of Mohammed Ben Musa is Frederic Rosen’s essential 1831 English translation of Al-Khwarizmi’s foundational ninth-century Arabic text, Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa’l-muqābala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). This book introduced the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations to the world, formally establishing algebra as an independent mathematical discipline. Rosen’s work provided the West with its first comprehensive access to the treatise that named the field of “Algebra” (from al-jabr) and contributed the concept of the “algorithm” (from Al-Khwarizmi’s name). It is a vital document in the history of mathematics, bridging the knowledge of earlier civilizations to the European Renaissance.