2019/06/19 by Yassine Hachaı̈chi, Yassine Hachaichi, Hachaichi, Yassine +6
Arts and Humanities · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Mathematics #Historical Astronomy and Related Studies #History and Overview (math.HO) #History and Theory of Mathematics #Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis #math.HO
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1906.07964
in French
arxiv created 2019/06/19 · openalex publication_date 2019/06/19 · arxiv updated 2019/06/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, several Arab mathematicians studied numerical algorithms on integers. The extraction of the square root of an integer is based on an algorithm known at least since al-Khwarizmi (died around 850) which presents it in the framework of the decimal system of position theory, in his work the Indian calculus (al hisab al-hindi). Although this algorithm is less democratized than the four usual operations of arithmetic, it has experienced the same posterity, since it is still implemented today in our calculators and computers. We have chosen to expose the work of Al-Baghdadi, on the extraction of the square root of integers. His approach is purely numerical, it is more complete and more detailed than the works of its predecessors. We will highlight the interest of al-Baghdadi's text.