Qalasadi

Abu'l Hasan ibn Ali al Qalasadi

Born: 1412 in Bastah (now Baza), Spain
Died: 1486 in Béja, Tunisia

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Al-Qalasadi was born in Bastah, a Moorish city in Spain, and remainded there until the Christians captured it. He then left and travelled through the Islam world.

Al-Qalasadi wrote several books on arithmetic and one on algebra. He computed Sigman^2, Sigman^3 and used the method of successive approximation to determine square roots. He also used symbols in algebraic equations.

These were all known to have been discovered earlier. Sequences had been studied by Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi, methods for computing square roots were known to the Babylonians and algebraic symbols had been used by others earlier. However all or some of these may have been discovered independently by al-Qalasadi

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. C Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen literatur II (Leiden, 1949), 343-344. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996