Etymology
The word "algebra" is derived from the Arabic word Al-Jabr, and this comes from the treatise written in 820 by the medieval Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, entitled, in Arabic, كتاب المختصر في حساب الجبر والمقابلة or Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala, which can be translated as The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing. The treatise provided for the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. Although the exact meaning of the word al-jabr is still unknown, most historians agree that the word meant something like "restoration", "completion", "reuniter of broken bones" or "bonesetter". The term is used by al-Khwarizmi to describe the operations that he introduced, "reduction" and "balancing", referring to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation.
Read more about this topic: History Of Elementary Algebra
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