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* Discussion, Islamic mathematics Mathematics in Medieval Muslim World, '''No consensus''', 17 April 2007, ] |from1=Discussion, Islamic mathematics |destination1=Mathematics in Medieval Muslim World|result1=No consensus|date1=17 April 2007|link1=Talk:Mathematics in medieval Islam/Archive 1#Move to Islamic mathematics or Mathematics in Medieval Muslim World
* Discussion, Islamic mathematics various titles. '''No consensus''' 16 March 2011 ] |from2=Discussion, Islamic mathematics |destination2=various titles.|result2=No consensus|date2=16 March 2011|link2=Talk:Mathematics in medieval Islam/Archive 1#Proposed titles
}} }}
Partially translated from french wikipedia ]] (]) 11:27, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


==Discussion required==
== Biased article ==


There appears to be something of an edit-war in progress in this article. Could both sides please pause with the editing of the disputed passages, and discuss the situation here, civilly, stating clearly the case for both sides, with suitable sources, and we can arrive at a reasoned consensus by one means or another. Only then can we sensibly update the article. Thank you all in advance for your co-operation. ] (]) 10:08, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
95% of the so called islamic mathematicians were Persian. Their work had nothing to do with Islam nor arabs or their culture.


:Chanakya Volume 2 is a typical Hindutva POV-pusher who appears allergic to any outside influences on India (especially Greek). So he just goes around removing anything to his liking, even though it is well sourced. This type of disruption is very common in these topics, nothing new here really. ] (]) 06:15, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
The west has come to know Persians as arabs due to lack of knowledge, and the arab nationalists prey on that.
] (]) 19:01, 27 November 2011 (UTC)


something you same to dont know is that arabs conquered iran and part of the arabs persian speakers are arabs descent you seem to be an idiot ! there is no persian who speak arabic,even moderner persian dont speak arabic so how can a persian could speak arabic ????? <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 19:35, 21 December 2013 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> :I am literally an atheist, white guy from Maryland, and have never been to India. I could say the same for your Eurocentric, European chauvinism, if I wholly based your sociopolitical views on your username and barrage of editing. The information was far from well-sourced, and what Athenean is engaging in is far more common than what he's wrongfully accusing me of. <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 07:57, 17 September 2016 (UTC)</small> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


:: You would have a better case if you were not removing cited material, then. ] (]) 08:28, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
== Tranquil Pepere ==
=== Stop vandalism ===


* @{{u|Ian.thomson}} Hi, please take a look both at the edit history in the article, at the discussion above, and at the confirmed sockpuppetry investigation. ] (]) 08:28, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
I made an important contribution by translating the french wikipedia. What an horribilis discovery I made by seeing the history of the differents versions of wikipedia. It's a pure vandalism. Morris Kline has said about the mathematics made by Arabs and Hindus : It's not brillant. Open the book and you will see what exactly Kline think about it. ] don't even talk about the Arabs in the chapter devoted to algebra. I am not a native. I am sure I have made errors or maybe blunders during the translation. But vandalism is not acceptable.] (]) 13:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
:Ah, ok. I'll semi the page due to CV2's IP socking. Just saw the message his last IP left at Jim1138's talk page. ] (]) 08:50, 17 October 2016 (UTC)


== Supposed Indian "discovery" of irrationals ==
::I have reverted the recent additions by Tranquil Pepere. Reverting questionable content is not vandalism. Issues with the content include grammatical problems that make some sections incomprehensible, spelling errors, and a question of neutral POV. Tranquil Pepere, I suggest you post your proposed changes here on the talk page first, and give other editors a chance to discuss them. I've left a note on your talk page about editing in general. ] (]) 14:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
:::It is not a questionable content. It is a translation from the french wikipedia. Grammatical problems can be modified directly on the main page. If a passage is incomprehensible, in this case, you can transfert it to the talking page in order to ameliorate it. The question of neutral point of view must be discussed quoting the phrases tou estimate to be not neutral. What I see, it's vandalism. Or may be worst, a disregarding manner to welcome a non native englishman.Sincerly yours.] (]) 14:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
::::Your changes are unacceptable. It is not the duty of other editors to wade through large masses of poorly written material to correct it; it is up to ''you'' to make it of sufficiently acceptable quality that they will be willing to let it stand. Even apart from the grammar, there are other problems with the material you have added, so please stop ] to keep it and describe the changes you wish to make, one by one, on this talk page.<br>
::::]&nbsp;<small>(]&nbsp;·&nbsp;])</small> 15:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
:::::I repeat I ask to stop vandalism or worst censorhip (my contributions are made using quotations from academics professors not John Doe)] (]) 09:45, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


Before learning that the ] responsible for some recent edits is apparently a serial ], I went to the trouble of checking the sources cited for a passage of the article disputed by {{diff2|773251347|Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam|one of the edits}}, and for one of the purported facts added by {{diff2|773251277|Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam|another}}. I record my findings here for future reference.
:::::
*This first of these edits removed the following text from the article:
I'm French myself, as Tranquil Pepere, and I totally disagree with him.
{{quote|"This method had been used by the Greeks,{{sup|}} but they did not generalize the method to cover all equations with positive ].{{sup|}}"}}
My English is not good enough to make modifications directly on the page, I know and accept it, and it's not a matter of being unwelcoming to non native English speakers.
:on the grounds that a supposed check of the sources found that "this fact was not detailed". The Internet Archive contains versions of both sources (though both are earlier editions than those cited in the article). The text removed from the article is very clearly supported by the material on page of the Internet Archive's edition of Dirk Struik's ''A Concise History of Mathematics'', and pages and of its edition of Carl Boyer's ''A History of Mathematics''. In view of this, I haven't bothered trying to track down copies of the precise editions cited by the article.
If someone with a poor French grammar wants to make modifications directly on the page, I would understand that people ask him to make the modifications first on the talk page. It's a matter of wisdom. <small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 14:59, 6 June 2015 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:Unsigned IP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
*The second of the edits altered the text:
{{quote|"The Greeks had discovered ]s, but were not happy with them … " ,}}
:which had been in the article, to read:
{{quote|"While the ancient Indians had originally discovered ]s, the Greeks were not happy with them … ".}}
:The source supposedly justfying this alteration, subsequently added by {{diff2|773251778|Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam|a later edit}}, is . Nowhere in this source does its author either say or imply that irrational numbers were "originally discovered" by Indians, although he ''is'' a little sloppy in the way he throws around the term "irrational number" to refer to the surds which he documents as appearing in the ]s. The fact that the authors of these texts, along with the Babylonians long before them, named and manipulated quantities which ''we recognise today'' as being irrational, and obtained the very good rational approximation of {{sfrac|577|408}} for √2, in no way implies that the irrationality of these quantities ''was recognised by them''. The reason why the Greeks are credited with discovering irrational numbers is that they ''did'' recognise, and ''prove'', to their own consternation, and, as far as we know, before anyone else, that the square roots of non-square integers are irrational.<br>
]&nbsp;<small>(]&nbsp;·&nbsp;])</small>


== Wording is a bit poor. Musa predates Islamic Golden Age. ==
=== Change of name : Arabic mathematics ===


"...flourished during the Islamic golden age. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was the founder of algebra, ..."
{{quote|One speak of Arabic mathematics, but it was Arabic in language primarily. Most of the scholars were Greeks, Christians, Persians and Jews.<ref>Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Volume 1, p.191, Morris Kline, Oxford University Press, 1972</ref>}}
{{reflist}}
Most of the scholars speak about "Arabic mathematic". So a change is needed.] (]) 09:53, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
:You are mistaken. "Arabic mathematic" is not even correct English. It's a solecism which would not be used by ''any'' reputable scholar with a good command of the language. The term "Arabic mathematics" ''is'' commonly used, but the final "s" cannot be omitted. But in any case, the titling of English Misplaced Pages articles relating to intellectual developments in Islamic countries is controversial. Therefore, if you want to propose a change to the title of this article, you ''must'' follow the ].<br>
:]&nbsp;<small>(]&nbsp;·&nbsp;])</small> 13:42, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


While this predates the Islamic Golden Age, the backstory is useful. The trouble is that it reads like it's trying to place Musa in the Islamic Golden Age, or at least I was confused into to thinking so. With Khwarizmi, the nation, being largely Zoroastrian at the time of Muhammad ibn Musa, and only converting in roughly the 11th century by conquest, it should be made more clear to readers that Musa is not part of the Islamic Golden Age, but that his work sets up the concepts on which mathematicians of that age refined Algebra. Check the Misplaced Pages article on Khwarizmi. ] (]) 14:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
:Moving pages without consensus is not good. Having an revert edit war is worse. I've now added move protection to the page. If you want to start a move discussion please follow the procedure at ].


==Wiki Education assignment: Arab-Islamic Influence on the West==
:There have been previous discussion on the name of the page:
{{dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment | course = Misplaced Pages:Wiki_Ed/New_York_University_in_Shanghai/Arab-Islamic_Influence_on_the_West_(Fall) | assignments = ] | start_date = 2023-08-28 | end_date = 2023-12-15 }}
::]
:--] (]): 13:30, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


<span class="wikied-assignment" style="font-size:85%;">— Assignment last updated by ] (]) 10:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)</span>
=== Abuse of blockquote ===

The abuse of blockquote is not neutral. What interest is it to have commentaries such as "it's fantastic" or "an important contribution" or "it is not brillant". These are point of view. What is neutral is to say wich person made what and what was known before him. The rest is only glorification. And it is not allowed. Sincerely yours. ] (]) 12:39, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
In his ''A History of Mathematics'', Victor Katz says that:{{sfn|Katz|1993}}

<blockquote>A complete history of mathematics of medieval Islam cannot yet be written, since so many of these Arabic manuscripts lie unstudied... Still, the general outline... is known. In particular, Islamic mathematicians fully developed the decimal place-value number system to include decimal fractions, systematised the study of algebra and began to consider the relationship between algebra and geometry, studied and made advances on the major Greek geometrical treatises of ], ], and ], and made significant improvements in plane and spherical geometry.</blockquote>

An important role was played by the translation and study of ], which was the principal route of transmission of these texts to Western Europe. Smith notes that:{{sfn|Smith|1958|loc=Vol. 1, Chapter VII.4}}
<blockquote>The world owes a great debt to Arab scholars for preserving and transmitting to posterity the classics of Greek mathematics... their work was chiefly that of transmission, although they developed considerable ingenuity in algebra and showed some genius in their work in trigonometry.</blockquote>

] states regarding the role of Islamic mathematics:<ref>{{Citation|last=Sertima|first=Ivan Van|title=Golden age of the Moor, Volume 11|year=1992|publisher=Transaction Publishers|isbn=1-56000-581-5|authorlink=Ivan van Sertima|page=394}}</ref>
<blockquote>The Islamic mathematicians exercised a prolific influence on the development of science in Europe, enriched as much by their own discoveries as those they had inherited by the Greeks, the Indians, the Syrians, the Babylonians, etc.</blockquote>

] in his book "Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times" says :
{{quote|Though the mathematical work of the Hindus and Arabs was not brilliant ...}}<ref>Mathematical Tought from Ancient to Modern Times, Vol.1, Morris Kline, Oxford University Press, 1972, page 197</ref>:
{{reflist}}

=== Exemple of disinformation ===

{{quote|''Al-Biruni developed a new method using trigonometric calculations to compute earth's radius and circumference based on the angle between the horizontal line and true horizon from the peak of a mountain with known height.''}}
This is an example of disinformation I have suppress. There is no interest to evoke the second person who have discovered something. And the manner it was introduced let us presume that Al-Burini has calculated for the first time the radius of the earth. He was the second one.

<blockquote>] calculated the circumference of the Earth and obtained 250,000 stadia}} (it is believed that a stadium was 157 meters). So the result of Erathostene is 24,662 miles<ref>Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Volume 1, Morris Kline,p.161</ref></blockquote>
{{reflist}}<br>
<small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) </span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned -->

:There is no disinformation in the quoted passage about Al-Biruni's calculation of the Earth's radius. You have simply missed the point of it entirely, which is that Al-Biruni was the ''first'' person known to have calculated the Earth's radius ''using the method described''. That method is completely different from the one used by Eratosthenes, and is potentially much less expensive to apply, in that it doesn't require one to carefully measure the distance between two points some 100 or more km apart (in fact, about 900km in Eratosthenes's case). As it happens, the method isn't very useful in practice because the effect of atmospheric refraction on the measurements is not accurately determinable, but that doesn't make it entirely uninteresting.<br>
:]&nbsp;<small>(]&nbsp;·&nbsp;])</small> 17:19, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

==]==
As I already noted at ], the page title is unfortunate because it includes improper use of the adjective "medieval" (which is rampant in popular usage and should be discouraged in more educated historical discussion). "Medieval" means "intermediate between classical antiquity and the Renaissance". ] is a perfectly sufficient title for this page, there is no need for inserting a problematic adjective, it's not like we need to distinguish the mathematics of "medieval Islam" from that of "ancient Islam" or that of "Renaissance Islam". What is the "medieval" period in Europe is actually the "Golden Age" in the Islamic world (the two stages of development being, of course, connected), but since the article does not and should not propose to go into this question, it will be enough to just cut out the misleading adjective. --] <small>]</small> 09:51, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

: @]: While I personally agree "Islamic mathematics" would be the most appropriate name for this article, for among the reasons you mention, it has had the unfortunate effect of enticing hordes of uninformed editors to rename this article to various even more inappropriate titles. This name seems to be relatively uncontroversial and is derived from one of the better references on the subject (J. Lennart Berggren, ''Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam'', 1986). Also see ] and other threads in that archive. —'']'' 17:36, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

==Discussion required==

There appears to be something of an edit-war in progress in this article. Could both sides please pause with the editing of the disputed passages, and discuss the situation here, civilly, stating clearly the case for both sides, with suitable sources, and we can arrive at a reasoned consensus by one means or another. Only then can we sensibly update the article. Thank you all in advance for your co-operation. ] (]) 10:08, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

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To-do list for Mathematics in the medieval Islamic world: edit·history·watch·refresh· Updated 2022-09-17


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Discussion required

There appears to be something of an edit-war in progress in this article. Could both sides please pause with the editing of the disputed passages, and discuss the situation here, civilly, stating clearly the case for both sides, with suitable sources, and we can arrive at a reasoned consensus by one means or another. Only then can we sensibly update the article. Thank you all in advance for your co-operation. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:08, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Chanakya Volume 2 is a typical Hindutva POV-pusher who appears allergic to any outside influences on India (especially Greek). So he just goes around removing anything to his liking, even though it is well sourced. This type of disruption is very common in these topics, nothing new here really. Athenean (talk) 06:15, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
I am literally an atheist, white guy from Maryland, and have never been to India. I could say the same for your Eurocentric, European chauvinism, if I wholly based your sociopolitical views on your username and barrage of editing. The information was far from well-sourced, and what Athenean is engaging in is far more common than what he's wrongfully accusing me of. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chanakya Volume 2 (talkcontribs) 07:57, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
You would have a better case if you were not removing cited material, then. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:28, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
Ah, ok. I'll semi the page due to CV2's IP socking. Just saw the message his last IP left at Jim1138's talk page. Ian.thomson (talk) 08:50, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Supposed Indian "discovery" of irrationals

Before learning that the editor responsible for some recent edits is apparently a serial Hindu nationalist sockpuppeteer, I went to the trouble of checking the sources cited for a passage of the article disputed by one of the edits, and for one of the purported facts added by another. I record my findings here for future reference.

  • This first of these edits removed the following text from the article:

"This method had been used by the Greeks, but they did not generalize the method to cover all equations with positive roots."

on the grounds that a supposed check of the sources found that "this fact was not detailed". The Internet Archive contains versions of both sources (though both are earlier editions than those cited in the article). The text removed from the article is very clearly supported by the material on page 94 of the Internet Archive's edition of Dirk Struik's A Concise History of Mathematics, and pages 147 and 264-5 of its edition of Carl Boyer's A History of Mathematics. In view of this, I haven't bothered trying to track down copies of the precise editions cited by the article.
  • The second of the edits altered the text:

"The Greeks had discovered irrational numbers, but were not happy with them … " ,

which had been in the article, to read:

"While the ancient Indians had originally discovered irrational numbers, the Greeks were not happy with them … ".

The source supposedly justfying this alteration, subsequently added by a later edit, is available online. Nowhere in this source does its author either say or imply that irrational numbers were "originally discovered" by Indians, although he is a little sloppy in the way he throws around the term "irrational number" to refer to the surds which he documents as appearing in the Sulbasutras. The fact that the authors of these texts, along with the Babylonians long before them, named and manipulated quantities which we recognise today as being irrational, and obtained the very good rational approximation of ⁠577/408⁠ for √2, in no way implies that the irrationality of these quantities was recognised by them. The reason why the Greeks are credited with discovering irrational numbers is that they did recognise, and prove, to their own consternation, and, as far as we know, before anyone else, that the square roots of non-square integers are irrational.

David Wilson (talk · cont)

Wording is a bit poor. Musa predates Islamic Golden Age.

"...flourished during the Islamic golden age. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was the founder of algebra, ..."

While this predates the Islamic Golden Age, the backstory is useful. The trouble is that it reads like it's trying to place Musa in the Islamic Golden Age, or at least I was confused into to thinking so. With Khwarizmi, the nation, being largely Zoroastrian at the time of Muhammad ibn Musa, and only converting in roughly the 11th century by conquest, it should be made more clear to readers that Musa is not part of the Islamic Golden Age, but that his work sets up the concepts on which mathematicians of that age refined Algebra. Check the Misplaced Pages article on Khwarizmi. 69.169.184.185 (talk) 14:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Arab-Islamic Influence on the West

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2023 and 15 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yuxiang9 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Yuxiang9 (talk) 10:54, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

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